Blogs from Uganda, Africa - page 2

When you can hear raindrops on your roof, you know it is raining. When all those drops become one big wall of sound, you know it is insanely torrential, especially when it wakes you up at 4am. I didn’t get much sleep after that which is ok, because we were getting up at 5am anyway. Also, Glyn started writing today’s blog last night. How is that even possible without a Time Machine? And then in the jeep this morning, before anyone (that’s a typo, I meant to say ‘anything’ but ‘anyone’ probably is correct) had happened, his fingers were on fire on his iPad, getting irate about something or nothing. After an adequate breakfast, we left Ikaze Cottages to go to Mgahinga Gorilla National Park for Golden Monkey Trekking. It’s one of the smaller parks in ... read more

We left Irungu Forest Safari lodges at around 7am. They’ll be getting a good review from me as it’s a nice place and the main guy was very attentive. Amazingly (considering all the people in and out of that place) he always remembered our names and welcomed us back personally from our excursions. It was a wonderful location, had cats and fancy birds, plus a nightly herd of waterbuck. What more could you want? Our first destination today was the Ishasha section of Queen Elizabeth National Park, however the safari started long before that. This is because although large areas of land are accessible only with a permit, it doesn’t mean that the animals don’t wander further, as there’s lots of land between each section of the park. So it’s one big safari everywhere. The other ... read more

Seeing a leopard in the wild is a blessing, having the vehicle you’re riding in breaking down adds to the excitement. Seeing your spouse getting out of the vehicle to push adds extra excitement, there’s not been a dull moment today. Another early start meant that when we got to the gate of our fenced off area, we were still locked in. A young man came who out of the gate hut was still getting dressed, to unlock the padlock. Just outside our fenced area are dwellings where local families live, I guess they have a better idea on how to protect themselves from predators than we do. Today there were only waterbuck and a cat lining the path today. It was still dark when we left. The drive took under an hour to Kalinzu Forest ... read more

I never expected to witness a naked man swimming in a lake teeming with dangerous snakes, crocodiles and hippos, but part of the fun of travel is witnessing sheer insanity I believe! And also seeing lots of wild animals and their babies. Today’s excitement began with a neighbour’s cat visiting us during breakfast. It even let me stroke it :-). Glyn pointed out that it’s fur wasn’t as soft as our boys’, but it does look like it is well fed. Now our lodge is a distance from the main area, and does have an electric fence to keep out elephants and predators, but I did wonder about the walk between the fenced places, what happens when we get big and wild visitors? However, there was a man at the gate with a torch ready to ... read more

Uganda day 1 One and a half days to get to a swamp I am in the 60th country I have been to so nearly a third of the way to a full house! Getting here was a bit fraught at times but nothing like travelling with Qatar airways thankfully. The flight leaving Birmingham was about an hour late leaving with no explanation as to why. Then we spent 26 very long minutes traversing round Istanbul airport before the plane finally came to a standstill. This left us with forty minutes until our next flight was due to take off. We rushed off the plane, ran up some stairs and an escalator, ran to the dpertures board and….our next flight was running 75 minutes late…which was useful. On previous transfers at Istanbul we’ve had to go ... read more