Queen Elizabeth National Park

Sorry for the long break. I will explain later. I have much to write. I left Fort Portal in the front seat of a share taxi for the next town of Kasese. The driver didn't know where the taxi park was so he paid for a boda boda to take me to it. It was only a few minutes away. When I went to put my pack into the back of a minivan for the next stretch I was surprised to see that my waterproof raincover had somewhere blown off as I was on the boda. This sucks! It isn't replaceable here but shouldn't be a big problem. I was using it more to keep my pack clean anyway. I have my pack now for 6 trips and it's still in very good condition because I always keep a cover on it. I have an idea to replace with something later. The minibus only took me as far as a junction. The road straight is where I was going but the minibus was going right, towards the border with DRCongo. I got into another minivan here. We were in the area of Queen Elizabeth National Park now. I could tell because from the bus I could see many herds of Kob antelope, a few herds of buffalo, the odd waterbuck and even a lone elephant. Once I saw some wildlife I got into safari mode and started to keep a good look out of both sides of the bus. I finally got to the small village of Chambura. I was here to track chimpanzees living in the Chambura gorge. I was already really happy with my previous chimp experience but I wanted to see them again. This time inside the forest.
A guy who worked for the UWA got off the bus at the same place and felt it was his duty to tell me and help me about the park because he worked there. That was nice of him. I appreciated that because it would have been difficult without his help. He called the booking office for me and they had an open space on the 2pm chimp walk. It was now 1.50. I said I was coming right away and took all my luggage with me on the boda boda ride 4km to the booking office. There were others there but they weren't ready yet, so I was holding no one up. We finally set off at 2.30. I hitched a lift to the starting point into the gorge with a very friendly Swedish couple. It was them, 3 Danish guys ( who never said on word to me), me and our guide, Ben. We descended into the cooler, darker, lusher world of the gorge.
The Chambura gorge is an oasis of forest in the mostly savanna landscape of Q. Elizabeth N.P. It runs 14 km and is home to many primates including chimps, black and white colobus, red tailed monkey, vervet monkeys and also crocodiles, hippos and sometime lions and other animals. The were signs of hippos everywhere, big, muddy footprints, dung and sounds of their calling. The chimp tracking here is all by luck and they are not always seen. Ben said there were only 19 habituated chimps in the gorge! If I would have known this I probably wouldn't have tried tracking chimps here. Since I had to pay $50Us for the walk and then the $30US entrance, and all this for luck? We searched for 2 hours and saw many tracks of the chimps but didn't hear them or see them. At this point the Danes had to go but the Swedes and I stayed on because we were entitled to at least a 3 hour walk. We continued to search. We saw monkeys and some hippos but no chimps. I was utterly disappointed. This was big waste of money. Although the gorge was cool and I really liked it and could have explored it more, it wasn't worth $80. Now the Swedes and I are going to go away with this and tell everyone not to try chimps at Chambura gorge. The park should realize they are not getting good reviews with this. What they should do is what they do for the gorillas. They send out a scout in the moring to find the gorillas and then radio the locations back to the guides. Could you imagine paying $500 ( the cost of a gorilla permit) and not seeing the gorillas?

I hitched a ride with the Swedes. They were on a short tour and had their own driver and vehicle. I still needed a hotel and their's was too expensive, so their driver, Baker, said he would take me to the place he was staying. This worked out even better because it was closer to my next destination, Kalinzu Forest Reserve.