Over the border

I've never crossed a border from a country that drives on the left to one that drives on the right, and for some reason this excites me greatly.  I just cannot wait to see how the logistics work, and how many chances there are for disaster to strike.

Are the roads like a scalextric crossover?



Glad we've taken the full cover insurance.

My limited experience of African border crossings is very positive, in fact the nicest border personnel I have ever met were in Namibia and Botswana.  I have never had a border official in Europe ask me if I enjoyed their country, or tell me to come back soon - all with the biggest smiles you can imagine.  This at a place the guide book told me could take all day to transit through - total time for the complete crossing was about ten minutes.

So with this in mind I don't have any real concerns about this crossing - in fact I'm looking forward to it immensely.  As we are to visiting Rwanda, despite all the horrors of its recent history.



We will be crossing over the border using the Cyanika crossing - and heading the few miles further south to Musanze (also known as Ruhengeri)

Kibale Forest and the Queen Elizabeth National Park

After seeing the Nile at Murchison Falls we are heading south to the Kibale Forest - 800 sq km of prime African rainforest packed full of chimpanzees.  Or so we hope.

We have booked to stay at Primate Lodge Kibale - which is right next to the park visitor centre, so should be good for the various treks that can be done.  The people here seem very helpful, despite them apparently losing my deposit - they provided me with two bank account numbers to transfer money to.  The one I should have used has letters in the number - and my bank just refuse to deal with this, so I transferred to the other number which didn't have any letters.  But that seemed to be the wrong one - but in the end they found it just before I got my bank to try and recoup the loss.  Luckily it wasn't for a huge sum - it should be quite simple to do this kind of thing but banks seem to have a habit of making it as hard as they can.

I have tried to contact the Ugandan Wildlife authority to book a chimp tracking trek, but none of the e-mail addresses on their website seems to work, and the phone doesn't get answered. Hopefully we can sort stuff out when we arrive in the park.

After a few days in the forest we drive the short distance to the Queen Elizabeth National Park where we intend camping - nothing booked as I haven't found anywhere on the web to make bookings.  This should be the most "safari-like" part of our trip - lots of large mammals to see with the chance of catching the famous tree climbing lions of Ishasha.  

The Ishasha area of the park is very close to the DRC, and is not currently open to visitors due to the generally lively state of affairs across the border.  I'm hoping things may have calmed down to just "general mayhem" by the time we visit so that we may be able to camp in the area.  Probably have to take an armed guard if we do and I cannot see my wife liking that.....

Entebbe to Murchison

We arrive late into Entebbe airport so we wanted somewhere close by to stay, that would also come and pick us up from the airport.  We are going to tired, and probably nervous about the whole arriving in Africa thing - although we've done it before it is still a bit of a culture shock when getting off the plane.

Luckily there are plenty places in Entebbe to stay, and one in particular ticked all our boxes - the Entebbe Zoo!
Well it's not a zoo anymore, but is actually the Ugandan Wildlife Education Centre, which has a good reputation for education and wildlife conservation.  They also house and rehabilitate injured or orphaned animals - so from our point of view this seemed like an ideal place to spend our first night.  http://www.uwec.ug/  $50 for a night in a banda and an airport pickup.  Breakfast extra, but can be taken in their restuarant.



We get our hire car delivered here to us the next morning and we drive north to Kampala - hopefully finding a supermarket on route as we don't really fancy the Kampala traffic.

After Kampala we head further north to the Ziwa rhino sanctuary.  http://www.rhinofund.org/index.htm  Here we plan to camp for a couple of nights - 25,000 Ugandan shillings pppn, plus a park fee of 20,000 UGs.  So about £10 a night pp.  Here are the only wild rhino in Uganda, having recently been re-introduced. You can go on tracking trips (about £20 pp).



After Ziwa it should be a nice short drive to Murchison Falls National Park.  I think by this stage the tarmac will have run out and we'll be onto the murram :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murram#Laterite_and_murram_roads



Hopefully the grader will have been along just before we get there.

Murchison Falls is where the river Nile forces it's way through a narrow gorge, but there is much more to the park than just the river.  To the north is savannah like grassland, and to the south is more forest like.  Here we have booked into the Red Chili rest camp  http://redchillihideaway.com/paraa.htm I'm a bit worried that this might be an overlander kind of place, but it is very close to the park gate so getting into the park in the early morning should be nice and easy.

The guidebooks and Ugandan Wildlife Authority website say that the park is good for spotting lions, so maybe that will make up for only spotting one in Nam/Bots a few years ago.  And that was a really poor spot as the lion in question was lying under a bush, 200m away, fast asleep.  Although we did get a very good view of his knackers....

Where to stay

We would love to do the whole "luxury" safari, but we're not overpaid and underworked bankers, so we are looking to mostly camp, or stay in fairly modest accommodation.  However as this is actually our honeymoon, we have added a few nicer hotels into the mix.

There is an enormous range in the price of where to stay at night - some places I have booked are $10-15 per night and others are $500 per night.  I still can't quite understand how the economics work, I would imagine that the person who will clean our room at the $500 pn hotel probably doesn't get paid that much in a year.  But should you not go to these places because of that, or should you go because the hotel is providing much needed employment?

It's a dilemma and one that we've tried to balance by staying in places that have a reputation of being good employers - at least that is the impression we have got from them, and from the guide books.

We decided to book and pay for as many of the places as possible - again to avoid having to carry too much cash with us, and to take away the "where are we going to stay tonight" worries.

The honeymoon suite?


There are some places where we are just going to turn up and try to find a campsite - I'm hoping this won't lead to this-



 

Planning the route

After getting the gorilla visit organised we needed to work out where to visit and where to stay for the remainder of the trip - so it was out with the maps and guidebooks to see what to do and where to go.

One thing we learned from Namibia and Botswana was to try not to drive too much, and to stay in nice places for a few nights rather than just one.

We reckon that we might travel 2500-3000 km rather than the 6000 that we did in Nam/Bot.

The way the main National Parks are arranged seemed to lend themselves to a nice round trip - North to Murchison Falls, South West to Kibale and QE Forest, further South to Volcans in Rwanda, even further South to Nyungwe, then North and West to Akagera over the border again into Uganda and Lake Mburo.

This route would seem to give us the chance to see all the different terrains, from savannah to forest to mountain, to volcanoes, to lakes, to marsh.  It should also give us a great chance to see some of the towns - Fort Portal, Musanze, Kigali, Mbarara  and the countryside and farmland in between.

The different NPs also have very different styles to them, with fantastically diverse wildlife to view.

Vehicle hire

We have decided to hire a 4x4 - simply it seemed more sensible to have a more robust vehicle for some of the dirt roads.  We had a 4x4 in Namibia/Botswana a few years ago, and although roads there were generally pretty good, we did hit some deep sand in some of the NPs so it was more a necessity than a luxury.

Unfortunately it is not so easy to get a good 4x4 for hire in Uganda (Namibia had lots to offer, with fridges and roof tents etc) -

Namibian 4x4


I did some internet searching - and found a few good reports on tripadvisor and such like for a company called Habari Car Rentals http://www.ugandarwandacarhire.com/ who offered a Mazda Levante for 3 weeks.  Once I contacted them I found them very helpful and as they use a British bank account we could even transfer money to them without incurring massive banking charges.  We have been corresponding with someone called Kizito who seems very keen to help - they have even searched the camping shops of Kampala to see if they could find a gas canister that would fit my little stove.  (they couldn't so I'll be taking my petrol stove instead).


Not available!

They have offered to buy a couple of camping chairs, which will certainly come in useful.  They are going to deliver the car to our hotel in Entebbe.

We even managed to haggle a better price from them - so hire of vehicle, maximum insurance, and cross border fees/carnets - US$1750.00 (1325Euro or £1085.00)

Proposed route map

Starting at Entebbe airport just south of Kampala and going in an anti-clockwise direction.