Masindi - Rweteera - Kibale Forest NP - Bigodi Wetland - Home

Christmas Eve found us leaving Masindi for our next destination of Rweteera Safari Camp south of Fort Portal in the tea-growing district adjacent to Kibale Forest National Park.

The drive was about 270 km and took 7 hours.  The whole way - bar a kilometer or two - was on gravel - and not good gravel!  Jenny’s phone has a step counter to keep track of her get-fit walks around Hamilton.   Without getting out of the car the counter was over 20,000 steps - giving you an indication of the bumpiness of the roads.  The only good thing was the fact that the road crews had knocked off for a couple of days otherwise we would have had graders and other work vehicles to contend with as well. 

Despite the conditions we noted that some some Ugandan drivers refused to modify their behaviour and continued to astonish us with their foolhardiness and lack of concern for fellow drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians.  Once I came to a dead stop amongst several chaps on bicycles while a truck careened, half out of control, around a bend narrowly missing us all.  Needless to say we paid little attention to the scenery or birds as we travelled.  One thing we couldn’t help noticing was that every village had butchers doing a roaring trade.  It was a bit disconcerting to see large numbers of customers waiting while the carcasses were being chopped up with axes though.  

We arrived at the camp in the early afternoon covered in sweat and red dust and the lake looked very inviting.  We settled for a shower and a beer.

Butchers were doing a roaring trade in every village on Christmas Eve.

This region is high altitude, cool and has crater lakes and rainforest - very similar to the Atherton Tablelands of Queensland in many ways.  Most of the cleared areas are planted to tea or eucalyptus forests with typical African food gardens in between.  Unlike the cane fields around Masindi it is highly picturesque.  Rweteera Safari Camp is set on one of the small lakes and is very leafy and pleasant.  It has tents and bandas as well as self-camping.  We stayed in a nice banda.  It was a bit of a shmozzle with some interesting food, a broken drinks fridge and no internet (despite the sign saying they had it) but the staff were lovely and the place had so many good birds.  Christmas Day lunch was spaghetti Napolitana and dinner was pumpkin soup then chicken in white sauce with rosemary potatoes and mixed vegetables finishing with fruit salad - washed down with a Nile Special beer.

African Blue Flycatcher

African Dusky Flycatcher

Red-billed Firefinch

Red-headed Bluebill

Woolly-necked Stork

Copper Sunbird

View across tea plantations to Rwenzori Mountains

Rainforest-clad hills of Kibale Forest National Park

Always entertaining Black-and-white-casqued Hornbills

Rweteera Safari Park

Village Weaver

African Harrier-Hawk

Malachite Kingfisher (photo by Jenny)

Kibale Forest National Park is a large reserve of tropical rainforest nearby with a huge bird list.  Apart from driving through the park on the main local road we didn’t visit it.  On this occasion we decided to not spend the large amount of money to enter the park and then extra to do a bird walk (you can’t bird on your own).  Instead we did a guided walk around the lake with the camp's guide.  He was a bit fuzzy on some of the birds but he took us into farmland and the tea-plantations that we wouldn’t have ventured into on our own so we ended up having a great walk and seeing some good birds.

On Boxing Day we were up early to head to the Bigodi Wetlands for another guided walk.  This is an initiative of the locals and takes visitors on a 2-3 hour walk through rainforest remnants, a papyrus swamp, farms and eucalyptus woodlots.  Our guide was James and he was excellent.  He was so enthusiastic and made sure we saw many of the monkey species (5 of the 8) and over 50 species of birds.  We did the track in 4 1/2 hours and the cost was a tiny fraction of the cost of a similar walk in the national park.  The money supports local activities such as schools, medical facilities, training etc. so it is hard to justify the national park fees.  Maybe next time we will venture into the park.

Today we left after a leisurely breakfast and had a relatively stress free and 99% bitumen drive home which took just under 5 hours.  Our askari Richard was so pleased to see us.  He surprised us by introducing us to his wife and 2 year old daughter - we didn’t know he had either!  We do know his family live a long way away so maybe he used the Christmas bonus we gave him to bring his wife and daughter here for a visit.

Olive Baboons raiding a maize field

Yellow-billed Barbet checking out a potential nest site

Guereza Black-and-white Colobus

Eastern Red Colobus

Snow-crowned Robin-Chat

Blue-headed Tree Agama

Grey Heron basking in the late-afternoon sun

A few bird facts for the week away.  202 species identified.  40 lifers for me.  71 new additions to my Uganda list.

Now we will relax here at home for a while planning the next trip - maybe to Jinja where the Nile flows out of Lake Victoria and to Mount Elgon National Park.

Murchison Falls National Park and Budongo Forest

All of our commitments completed we headed off on Tuesday for our Christmas Safari.  First stop was Murchison Falls National Park where the Nile River flows through a narrow channel for some impressive waterfalls (claimed to be the most powerful in the world).  We arrived at Red Chilli Rest Camp around lunchtime.  First birds inside the park was a pair of Abyssinian Ground Hornbills.  We took a 3 1/2 hour cruise up river to the falls and back.  The guides knew their wildlife and stopped the boat for cliff-nesting Red-throated Bee-eaters, Goliath Herons, African Darters as well as for every Nile Crocodile and Elephant.  I mentioned I was hoping to see Rock Pratincoles and when we got to the falls I was told to keep an eye on one particular rock.  Sure enough a Pratincole turned up quickly and posed nicely.  We have done a few cruises in Africa and elsewhere and rated this one as excellent value for money - Wild Frontiers was the company.

To get to the main game viewing section of the park you have to cross the Nile to the north side.  The first ferry leaves at 0700 and many campers were up early for this.  We were tired from the previous day’s drive so day 2 started with a leisurely breakfast then the 0900 ferry.  We spent 7 hours driving some of the many trails and returned on the 1600 ferry in time for sundowners and an early dinner.


This is the furthest north we have been in Africa and many of the mammals were new to us.  Uganda Kob, Jackson’s Hartebeeste, Oribi, Patas Monkey and Reticulated Giraffe.  No Zebra and only one or two Elephants and Buffalo.  Lots of interesting birds but many familiar species were missing at this visit.

Red Chili camp is low-mid range but perfectly fine.  The tents and banda were clearly oldish and a bit tired but our banda was fine.  It had the advantage of an ensuite so no venturing out in the middle of the night and bumping into the hippo that comes and crops the grass each night.

Cruising on the Nile

One of the 5-6 different boats that run cruises.

Red-throated Bee-eater at its cliff nest hole.

No swimming!

Colobus monkey

Murchison Falls (remember The African Queen?)

Rock Pratincole

Oribi

Uganda Kob (female)

Reticulated Giraffe

Jackson's Hartebeeste

Day three saw us heading on a slow drive out of the park to the nearby regional centre of Masindi.  We arrived at New Court View Hotel at lunchtime.  That afternoon we drove out through extensive sugar cane plantations to the west towards Lake Albert.  The border with the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda runs down the middle of this lake.  We ran out of time to reach the lake itself but stopped at the top of the escarpment where we could overlook the lake and into the DRC.  Our stopping point coincidentally was the best local spot for Mocking Cliff Chat. I had three lifers at this spot - the Chat, a Western Violet-backed Sunbird and a Black-billed Barbet.

View from Buiiso overlooking Lake Albert and the mountains of the DRC to the west.

Day 4 was exciting.  We had booked a local bird guide - Raymond - to take us into the Budongo Forest along the famous (among birders at least) Royal Mile road.  We collected Raymond nearby at about 0800 and birded the forest for 4 hours.  I added 17 species to my life list and took it past 2000.  I reckon I would have found 5-6 on my own.  Raymond was well worth his fee.  Birders planning to come here should do intensive training to strengthen their neck muscles. Most birds are 30 m up and vertically overhead.

The Albertine Rift is a major region for endemic animals and plants - most notably the Mountain Gorillas of Rwanda, the DRC and Uganda.  There are 41 Albertine Rift endemic bird species and the far west of Uganda is home to 25 of them.  I am clearly hoping to see as many as possible over the coming days and the months ahead.

The Royal Mile, Budongo Forest with some French birders.

In the next post I will report on our long drive to Kibale Forest National Park and our three days in that district.  

For more bird photos see my Flickr album at:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bukoba_steve/albums/72157676791465850

A depiction of the Albertine Rift (from the top: Lakes Albert, Edward, Kivu and Tanganyika) 

Along the road south of Masindi.

How to solve the carnage on Uganda's roads

With a population of 1.6 times that of Australia, Uganda has a road toll 8.2 times higher.  In 2013, over 10,000 people were killed on the roads here.

My research into comparative national stats has revealed that the situation in Tanzania (where we lived in 2010-11 and drove regularly) is actually worse but I think that the poorer road infrastructure and larger cities there might make up most of this difference - and we rarely drove in the cities there.  Certainly Uganda is the worst country for driving I have experienced.

This graph shows the Uganda and Tanzania road fatality rates on a per 100,000 person and per 100,000 vehicle basis compared to Australia and a range of countries many of us might have visited in our travels.  Basically if you thought India (or China or Thailand) was bad …

After driving for 3 months here in urban Kampala and on the highways leading out of town I have become somewhat used to the chaos and anarchy that tends to rule.  Rarely do we head somewhere in our car without seeing something that makes us gasp in stunned disbelief.  

We have seen coaches full of people forced off the road and trucks that have clearly had head-on collisions with other similar sized vehicles.  Fortunately we have not yet witnessed the accidents as they have happened - just the aftermath.  

The main problem is poorly trained drivers making extremely poor decisions.  If this could be fixed with a wave of a wand all would be well.  That of course is not going to happen overnight.  So what changes could be made quickly that would improve things dramatically?  

My solution is for the traffic police to target trucks.  

Nearly all trucks here - from small delivery vans to huge semi-trailers - are heavily overloaded - and many are clearly unroadworthy based on the smoke pouring out of their exhausts.  The consequence of these two factors is that the trucks crawl along the roads and highways and inevitably have a long stream of other vehicles following with impatient drivers who have poor training and make poor decisions (as previously noted).  This leads to insane overtaking and cutting in and regular accidents - either vehicles forced off the road or head-on collisions.

So my suggestion is to first target illegally overloaded and unroadworthy trucks.  “But this will add to the cost of everything we buy” I hear you say.  Maybe so in the short term but if you can haul less stuff twice as quickly and more reliably there shouldn’t be a cost impact - probably the reverse in fact.  The breakdown and accident rates and the huge costs involved with the road toll would be reduced.  A side benefit would be less pollution from the many smoking, unroadworthy trucks.

Once this is underway and the problem with trucks has become manageable I would get the police to enforce the road laws being flouted regularly by most motorists.  Priorities would be speeding, unroadworthy cars, failing to indicate when required, not using lights in foggy conditions at at night, using mobiles while driving, not using seat belts, failing to give way at intersections etc.  All these laws exist but they are not policed.  Typically we pass regular police roadblocks with numerous cops standing around.  They occasionally stop vehicles - seemingly at random.  They check for licenses and car papers only.  Overloaded and unroadworthy vehicles are routinely sent on their way.  I have seen police cars and motorbikes in traffic ignoring the most outrageous driver behavior.  

So:

1. remove the main cause of frustrations - the trucks that can’t travel at highway speeds because of overloading or unroadworthiness
2. enforce all the laws that exist that are generally ignored by most drivers
3. improve driver training
4. improve road infrastructure and signage so drivers have no excuses.

Why these things are not happening is a mystery to me!

This video is a good illustration of the driving conditions in Kampala.  Our route typically takes us through 4-5 roundabouts just like the one shown here.  It is even worse out on the open roads because of the potential speeds involved.

Entebbe weekend

We decided to have a night in Entebbe.  This is the Lake Victoria town that hosts the Ugandan International Airport.  It was the seat of government in colonial times and is very leafy and still has many luxurious homes.  It is also home to a great birding spot - the Botanical Gardens.  We found a nice little B&B (Serene Guesthouse) and headed down Saturday morning.

The satnav wanted me to head into Kampala and down the main connecting road to Entebbe.  This is to be avoided of course for all the standard reasons you should never drive in Uganda.  I studied Google Earth and found that we could cut across country on gravel roads through villages and avoid 90% of the traffic snarl.  Apart from the heavy overnight rain which muddied many of the gravel roads it was easy and probably quicker than going through Kampala - 90 mins included a short period where we were lost and had to backtrack.  If we have visitors I would take this route to pick them up at the airport rather than traumatise them with the Kampala roads.

We checked into the B&B around noon and headed to the gardens.  These are quite large and slope down to the lake shore.  They must have been magnificent 50 years ago but are now suffering a lack of love and attention.  Some of the trees are spectacular in size and character.

Gnarly buttress.

Hamerkop nest (about 1m across).  Not sure if it is still in use.

Ancient strangler fig.

A walkway with trellis and creeper - how many years since it has been pruned? 

There have been over 300 bird species recorded here and some regularly reported species would be new to me.  Being a Saturday afternoon heading into the festive season the gardens were full of picnicking families and other groups.  It is apparently mandatory that any group has a huge speaker system powered by a portable generator.  The speakers are invariably turned up to 11 with full bass and distortion.  The music is either rap or repetitive bongo.






We were continually changing direction to avoid this noise but never really got away from it.  Despite this the birds were active and we saw 55 species in 2 hours.  Orange Weaver was new to me.  We saw a good range of bush, forest and wetland species but decided to pack it in and revisit at 0900 Sunday morning when the gate opened and hopefully before the crowds returned.

Black-headed Heron looking cool.

Western Yellow Wagtail recently arrived from Europe.

Wood Sandpiper

Black-headed Heron - bathing (not so cool looking)

The B&B was very nice and quiet with a lovely garden full of birds and monkeys.  For dinner we walked 10 mins to an Indian restaurant (called Faze 3) and had chicken or prawn curries with rice, nan bread and wine.  Breakfast was simple but tasty with fresh fruit, yoghurt, coffee toast and eggs.  We gave the manager a lift into Kampala and she told us how mistreated she and the other staff were by the owners  - so I guess we won't stay there next time!





Unfortunately it bucketed down in the morning so we headed into Kampala for supplies before going home.  We plan to revisit for a couple of nights in January for more birding and nice meals.