On Safari in AFRICA — Ugandan National Park Trek Unmatched for Birding, Wildlife

I was way off the beaten track, heading for the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest near the Ugandan border with the Congo and Rwanda in search of mountain gorillas.

My first destination would be Entebbe, Uganda, and the friendly airline check-in clerk in Memphis advised me that I would have to stop along the way to re-check my baggage because I would be changing planes more times than the luggage tags normally allowed.

No problem, I had been training for months for this trip, and could hike 3 miles in 30 minutes, carrying a 15 -pound backpack.

Many historical images of Uganda and the infamous Idi Amin flashed through my mind as we landed at the new and modern Entebbe International Airport. It was surprising to see that the old Entebbe airport still stands. It was even more startling to see that the airplane that was hijacked there in 1976 still sits as a rusty hulk in front of the abandoned terminal.

These sad images of the past were quickly forgotten on our arrival at the charming colonial Lake Victoria Hotel.

Most in our group were devoted birdwatchers. Binoculars, field guides and cameras were soon the main topics of discussion.

A full-day drive north took us through the busy capital city of Kampala and on to the towns of Masindi and Biso, where we dropped down the escarpment of the great African Rift Valley.

Above Murchison Falls are 14 miles of cascading rapids, some of the most exciting whitewater in all of Africa. There was a great sense of excitement as we retraced the very route that Sir Richard Francis Burton must have taken more than 150 years ago on his epic journey to discover the headwaters of the Nile.

Our excitement grew as the ground actually shook on our approach to Murchison Falls, where the river hurls itself through a narrow 20- foot crevice before plunging nearly 150 feet in one breathtaking leap.

Our tented facilities here for the next two nights were about 20 miles downstream at the Nile Safari Camp, situated high on the south bank of the Victoria Nile River .

Each tented room has a shower (one 5-gallon bucket capacity of water, hand-carried by the staff), a real flushing toilet and a front deck overlooking the magnificent river.

The next day we viewed game as we took a 10-mile-long boat excursion upstream, coming as close as we dared to the falls from below.

This is a remote corner of Africa near the border of the Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is where part of the movie “The African Queen” was filmed.

Murchison Falls National Park is the largest of Uganda’s national parks and has the highest concentration of wildlife along the entire Nile.

The next leg of our safari stretched south along 200 miles of reasonably good but often bumpy roads to Kibale Forest National Park. This enchanting tropical forest is almost completely bordered by tea plantations, and is home to 12 species of primates, the highest density in the world.

Although the altitude was about 5,000 feet, walking was not difficult as we hiked with our excellent local guide for several miles along clear paths in the shadows of the quite forest.

The silence was broken by the sudden and ear-splitting calls of a nearby troop of chimpanzees, as they went crashing and hooting through the ancient forest during their morning search for food and companions. The sounds seemed to come from all around us in the giant trees.

In addition to chimps, we also saw olive baboons, vervet monkeys, gray-cheeked mangabeys, red colobus, red-tailed monkey and black- and-white colobus.

Seventy miles or so south is Queen Elizabeth National Park, the second-largest of Uganda’s national parks. It is classified as an Important Bird Area by UNESCO with 568 of Uganda’s 1,017 species of birds – more than a quarter of Africa’s bird species and more than any other park in Africa.

We spent two nights at Mweya Lodge, situated on a peninsula overlooking Lake Edward and the brooding Rwenzori Mountains bordering the Congo. A morning hike in the Maramagambo Forest took us to an awesome cave filled with thousands of bats and one rather large and very fat African rock python .

Birding had been incredible, with 178 species logged and an astonishing 72 of them new to my life list. But birding, after this point in the trip, would be secondary.

Traveling even farther south (about 20 miles from the Rwanda border), we arrived at Gorilla Forest Camp, an intimate luxury camp exclusively situated inside the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park. The eco-sensitive camp is designed to have as little impact as possible on the surrounding forest .

The eight custom-designed and secluded rooms lack electricity, but ample candle and oil lamps provide the romantic ambience of “old Africa.”

This is true African jungle and the giant trees are festooned with creepers, orchids, mosses and incredibly thorny vines. It is both mysterious and awesome.

While more than 120 species of mammals make their home here, Bwindi’s greatest claim to fame is that it is sanctuary to about half the world’s population of mountain gorillas. This is the world’s most endangered ape and it is found only in small areas of this protected mountain range that overlaps parts of southwest Uganda, northwest Rwanda and eastern Congo.

Ugandan and Rwanda authorities are fiercely protective of the gorillas, limiting permits for daily visits to three groups of six persons. Our group had the opportunity of one trek per person.

About 98 percent of all the gorilla treks are successful, but there is no guarantee of seeing gorillas. The actual viewing time is limited to one hour.

From our base camp at about 4,000 feet, we would hike ever upwards, frequently exceeding 7,500 feet as we tracked the gorillas from where they had been seen last the evening before.

By mid-morning, all I could think of was that my training in Memphis should have been 10 miles with a 150-pound backpack.

The humid heat, itching and fatigue were instantly forgotten once we located the gorillas. There are no words to describe the sounds and even the smells of a group of 14 wild gorillas only 20 feet away munching contentedly as they sat in a veritable salad bowl. They had only to reach in any direction for food, as everything seemed to be edible.

Two days later, we crossed the border into Rwanda and were again afforded the opportunity to track mountain gorillas on their side of the Virunga volcanoes. This was the site for Diane Fossey’s pioneering work on gorillas, and the location of the film “Gorillas in the Mist.”

On both occasions, our single hour of viewing raced away and all too soon we had to make our way back down the mountains.

To see the beauty of these gentle giants eating, playing and resting in their forest clearings was undoubtedly the most profound natural history experience of my life.

Charles G. Wilson is zoo director emeritus of the Memphis Zoo.

—————————

On the horizon

Charles Wilson has traveled in 45 countries.

He leads eco-trips to raise money for the Memphis Zoo’s conservation fund.

His next excursion, open for Mid-Southerners, will be a May safari to Kenya with an extension to track mountain gorillas in Rwanda. A program will be presented at the Memphis Zoo at 6:30 p.m. February 15 for those interested in the trip.

Call Wilson at (662) 429-2704 or E-mail zooemeritus@cs.com.