The first part of this note was sent off as an email Jan 17 after 8 days of travel.  I include it now to simply keep my notes together. The remaining days of our two weeks in Uganda with Mamaland were no less hectic, leaving no time to reflect on each day’s activity.  I will continue, dated Jan 23, just summarizing some of the high points.

Our trip to Entebbe ballooned from 1 ½ days to 4 days, caused by a late first flight out of Calgary.  To summarize, it took an hour and a friendly American bystander to create a new route to Entebbe which arrived Thursday rather than Tuesday.  It is a good thing we take long trips.  Our hosts for the first part of our 7 week trip is Mamaland Safari, rearranged our 17 day tour and so now we will start on day 3 of the old itinerary.

Each day is hectic.  Off before dawn, after dusk into our backcountry lodge for shower, dinner, bed.  We have seen 100s of bird species, many big African animals.  Our main people connections outside of Tony out guide and Ronnie our driver are the people in the lodges who are so attentive, usually carrying our stuff, sometimes holding an elbow on a tricky part of the path to our cabin.  This morning as we birded the grounds of the lodge overlooking the rift valley below one fellow followed with big chairs to sit on and another turned up with coffee and china cups.  On the highway between sites we see lots of people action that I sometime get snaps of as we whiz by.

We have hiked in to watch chimps lounging in the forest canopy and have gone by boat along the connector between two of the lakes that the Nile feeds.  We shared the water with numerous hippos who can get too close at a time, particularly since along the banks where we can spot the birdlife they like to snooze, just below the surface.  For the first time in my birding life I spotted flocks of kingfishers, the pied, as they chased each other, plunged into the river for fish and resting momentarily on the mud banks.    Most days we head off early, while the sun rises and creates that golden light, to drive through a national park.  Tony will pick out one of the myriad of species this world has to offer from a bush or a mound.  Rich with his binoculars usually finds it before me with my camera.  We head on to the next one.  Sounds repetitive, but then you have to be a birder.  We make our long drives mid-day and then usually get some more good birding late afternoon.

I have so many good bird photos that will take me weeks to weed through. For the moment I will share the Grey-Crowned Crane, which might have been highest on my lists for this trip.

Just today, I have finally been able to get my photo backups done. Over 2000 so far. It has been dangerous to go so long, but time and weariness have been hard on me.  So no time to process pictures let alone choose any to send.

Jan 23,

I am picking up this story at the Tilapia Lodge on a bay of Lake Victoria looking across at Entebbe, where we started the first night.  We arrived last night and will spend two quiet days here before leaving for Kenya.  Hopefully, internet permitting, I can post the note.

Jan 16-18 Topi Lodge

The Topi, like the other lodges, is quite isolated in the bush. I would call it African veld. It is surrounded by a high wired fence to keep the lions out.  We are on the edge of the Ishasha Rift, in Queen Elizabeth Park.  We arrived at the lodge late after having been birding from a boat of the connector between Lakes Albert and Edward, part of the Nile system.

We spent the next day birding from the lodge in our usual way.  Out with the early light, late breakfast, birding around the lodge, out before dinner, dinner and bed.  The meals were on an elevated platform some 25 m or so from the lodge so we had our watching stuff with us.  The evening platform different from the morning one.  We always eat outside to the songs of the veldt, crickets and frogs at night birds in the morning.

Our final morning we were back down to the Nile to drive the safari roads of the park.  This was the best part of the day for me as the golden light helped me find the birds easier and the photos were a little better.  Once birding waned we headed off again.  This time to the higher jungle country in the southwest.

Birding the jungle is not as satisfying for me. The birds are harder to find buried in the foliage, but Tony always seems to find some and can sometimes help me find them in my camera.  

Jan 20, Bwindi Impenetrable NP… Gorilla watching.

We spent the night in a very basic lodge with only sporadic power, but good service.  I was still hobbling badly from my fall 7 days ago, and my cough particularly at night was not allowing much rest.  We were at 2400 m; the views on the drive in, climbing hour after hour on the steep mangled roads, did not promise easy walking.  The roads, near the end, tended to run along ridges with severely steep jungle covered slopes each side of the road. 

We had our orientation and were offered a porter.  I was taking a lighter camera setup than I use for birding and two water bottles in a jacket pocket so I didn’t hire a porter.  As soon as the steep downhill on indistinct trail started I began to fall behind.  With one bad knee I had to lower myself always on my left leg.  The right one kind of led the way.  I tried to keep up, but rushing led to being tripped up by the vines and an awful struggle to get up.  Soon an armed guard was assigned to help.  He would hold my hand and helped lower me from one poor foothold to the next.  I was still going down one leg at a time and so we were slow.

When we got to a bottom, only apparent by somewhat level footing, the guards found the gorilla group we had been assigned to watch.  They were spread out in the deep fern ground cover. 

As our group of about a dozen clients and guards moved cumbrously among the gorillas they would tolerate us for a while and then rush off to get some more peace.  One silverback broke out of the bush and rushed by in front of me.  There was at least one baby, perhaps more.  They seemed kind of mournful to me, but they have to put up with this half hour incursion only once a day, if that can be any consolation.

It was a wonderful experience, although I feel badly for taking advantage of their threatened nature.  It would be nice if we could leave these peaceful creatures alone, but I guess without our tourist dollars they would be extinct.

I crawled back up the approximate route we came down on.  I was slightly better, but still climbing on only one leg dragging the other, and my poor conditioning meant that I could only go up in about 30 m segments before a minute rest was needed.

My guard Constantino, was my saviour.  There is little doubt in my mind that I should not have taken on this challenge with my problems.  It is humbling to be the poorest walker in a group.

The whole thing took a bit over three hours, much too rushed.  We then began the long drive on rough roads back into the somewhat lower world.  We spent the night in an old colonial Hotel, The White Horse Inn, in Kibale, and then birded our way back to Entebbe with yet another lovely lodge stay at Rwakobo Rock.

This morning, from our Tilapia Lodge we did what was supposed to be our first day’s tour to Mabamba Swamp to see the improbable Shoebill Stork.  We said goodbye to Tony and Ronnie who had become such good travel companions.  We have what will be our first time to relax and do nothing for a little over 24 hours before we head to the bus station and on to Kenya.

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