Welcome to the Jungle-Guns N' Roses

Today I had one of the most amazing experiences of my entire life.  We were able to sleep in a bit and didn’t need to report for breakfast until almost eight o’clock (that was nice, but not the most amazing thing).  After our usual breakfast of fresh fruit, juices, and cheese omelets, we were back in the fifteen passenger van driving to Kibale National Park.

We weren’t on the road long when we stopped for a photo op at the Equator.  An interesting fact-water drains in clockwise and counter clockwise directions on each side of the Equator and if you walk just twenty feet in either direction, you can see the difference.  Also important to note that if you’re traveling right around the Equator, the daylight and darkness are almost equal most of the year.  In Uganda it gets light around 6:30am and dark around 6:30pm.

We packed back in and, after a short distance, turned off the main road onto a “short cut”.  We spent the better part of three hours on this windy, dusty road.  At times the dust was so thick it had covered all of the plants along the side of the road in a layer of burnt orange.  The countryside of Uganda is beautiful with rolling hills of banana trees, tea, and other crops.   However, I find it even more interesting to watch as we pass through little towns and villages.  I love watching the people-kids walking to school in their school uniforms, groups of men on boda bodas (motorcycle taxis) waiting to give someone a ride, bicycle repair shops, fruit markets, men doing landscape maintenance with machetes, etc.

 

We saw many, many bicycles overburdened with bananas being pushed up and down the road and eventually came to a huge banana market where huge bunches of green bananas were being loaded to take to markets.  We also passed through a radish market that had so many thousands of radishes you could smell them for blocks.

We finally made it to the Office of the Ugandan Wildlife Authority where we picked up our passes for chimp trekking.   We had another hour or so to drive and now the dirt road was under construction.  It was interesting to see how the road construction worked as it appeared they were trying to widen the road for several miles.  There was fresh gravel and dirt being packed down with steam rollers.  It was the smoothest part of our journey!  In Uganda they have small speed bumps as you enter and leave every city, not to mention many potholes, so it can get pretty bumpy in the back of the van!

We arrived at our new lodge and after a quick lunch were on our way to Kibale National Forest for chimp trekking.  We had a brief introduction where they discussed the animals of Kibale Forest.  The park is known for chimpanzees but also has baboons and seven other types of monkeys.  There are larger mammals like elephants and forest hogs, and over 200 different types of butterflies!  We received information about how to behave around the chimps-we had to be quiet, we couldn’t go within a certain distance, and if one charged us we were just supposed to stay still unless it’s carrying a stick or log in which case we’re supposed to step aside. (Seriously, those were our instructions…) 

We drove a few kilometers to a backroad into the park and then began trekking in small groups of five, each with an armed escort.  Within a quarter mile we came upon two female chimps high up in the trees.  I didn’t understand why our guide didn’t stop to let us take pictures because I thought we couldn’t get within 80 meters of the chimps. However, a minute later I learned that she meant EIGHT meters as we came upon three chimps sitting around and we walked right up until they were right in front of us!  This was the beginning of an amazing two hours as we explored the forest and observed chimpanzees. 

Males having a nap, they like to sleep upside down apparently

Kibale Forest is home to 450 chimpanzees and one family group, of about 120, has been habituated to humans.  They do treks to see the chimps twice a day for informational purposes.  We learned that the males and females hang out in separate groups and that the males allow humans to approach them closer.  The females are more shy because they are protecting their young.  We were able to get quite close (within 8 meters to be honest) to several groups of males.  While we didn’t get too close to females, we did see quite a few, many with babies, and many young chimps playing as well.

Just eating a few ticks as a snack while grooming a buddy

Chimps can live to be around 55-60 years old.   Most of the males we saw were in their early twenties; although, we did see one of the older males who was in his late 40’s.  Baby chimps will nurse and nest with their mothers for the first three years of their lives.  Then their mothers wean them until they are about five.  After that, they have to make their own nest each night.  It takes a chimp about 3-5 minutes to make a nest and they make a new one each night because they move throughout the forest.  One of the coolest and craziest things was hearing the chimps call to each other in the forest.

When we emerged from the forest we found an entire family of baboons snacking along the road and enjoyed watching them as we walked back to the main road.  Several of us walked down the main road towards our camp as our driver took the guards back to their headquarters.