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.
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| 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.
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| African Blue Flycatcher |
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| African Dusky Flycatcher |
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| Red-billed Firefinch |
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| Red-headed Bluebill |
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| Woolly-necked Stork |
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| Copper Sunbird |
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| View across tea plantations to Rwenzori Mountains |
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| Rainforest-clad hills of Kibale Forest National Park |
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| Always entertaining Black-and-white-casqued Hornbills |
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| Rweteera Safari Park |
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| Village Weaver |
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| African Harrier-Hawk |
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| 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.
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| Olive Baboons raiding a maize field |
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| Yellow-billed Barbet checking out a potential nest site |
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| Guereza Black-and-white Colobus |
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| Eastern Red Colobus |
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| Snow-crowned Robin-Chat |
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| Blue-headed Tree Agama |
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| 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.
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