Crater Lakes

To the North of the Katwe road is an area of the QE national park known as the crater lakes.  There is a road that you can take which heads up the slope to give amazing views of the park, the Kazinga channel and the two Lakes, Edward and George.

The road (exceedingly rough) leads up to various extinct volcanic craters, which either have lakes or areas of rain forest in them.

There aren't many animals around, but the scenery is just breathtaking.  We even got some views up to the Rwenzori mountains, which seemed to have a near permanent covering of clouds.  The roads are often just bare rock, so a 4wd is absolutely essential.  The levante seemed to cope quite well, but after our little adventure in Murchison, we were both pretty glad to make it down to the Equator gate visitor centre.

It doesn't look like many people come up here - we certainly didn't see any other vehicles, or even signs that vehicles had been up the track.  The little visitor centre at the end of the track sold us some nice cold Krest lemon juice, it was blistering hot.  Who'd have thought it would be warm on the Equator?

Lions at last

The best place for viewing savanah animals in QE national park is in the far North East corner of the park near the village of Kisenyi which is a village on the shore of Lake George north of the Kazinga channel and not the village of Kisenyi on the shore of Lake Edward to the south of the channel .  You can reach this part of the park by exiting the park and using the road that links the town of Katwe with the main road.  This road is wide gravel and pretty good.

This is about a 45 minute drive away from Mweya, but you can stay in the park and use the park's own road network which takes about half an hour longer.

The area to the west of the main road is more acacia forest, whereas the area to the east is more grassland.  The wildlife changes as you move from one to the other, Elephants at one end and lions at the other.

It took 3 game drives before we eventually came across a small pride of lions, 3 adult females and 5 cubs.  They had just made a kill and were happily munching on the corpse of a young kob.  The kob's mother was
standing nearby looking anxiously in the direction of the lions - but she didn't seem to want to abandon her baby.

As we sat and watched them, a couple of other safari vehicles turned up and drove off the road and right up beside the feeding lions.  You are not allowed to drive off the tracks, but it seems standard practice by the local drivers/guides to ensure their customers get good photos.  This kind of spoilt the viewing for us, and presumably disturbed the animals as well.  However we don't blame the guides, it is up to the customers to keep them on the straight and narrow, and not to reward poor behaviour.

Luckily we came across the the lions again the next day and got to enjoy them undisturbed by other vehicles for over an hour.

Initially we only spotted a large female, but after watching her for a while we notice some movement in a large cactus tree nearby.  This turned out to be 3 small cubs who soon climbed down out of the tree and wandered over to meet their mother.  The cubs all had various cuts and wounds, so it looks like they had had a run in with something nasty over night.

The mother looked quite relaxed though and greeted her cubs in an affectionate way, as we sat on the roof of the levante enjoying the late afternoon light.

Safari, so good

We found the wildlife in QE NP easily matches the other parks we have visited in Africa.  Perhaps not for volume of animals but certainly for variety.

In our short time there we spotted hippos, elephants, lions, ugandan kob, monitor lizards, water buck, banded mongoose, buffalo amongst many others.  The bird life is outstanding and the insects deafening.

At night we had hippos wandering through the campsite and feasting on the grass round the tent and every morning we were entertained by the battling warthogs.

On our second morning this happened-

Which was quite exciting.

Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda

Shortly after crossing the equator, we took a right turning off the main road and headed for the Mweya peninsula. This is where the park headquarters for the Queen Elizabeth National Park is situated, and where we hoped to camp for a few days.

The peninsula is a headland sitting high above Lake Edward to the West and the Kazinga Channel to the South and East.  The channel connects Lake Edward to Lake George and is a haven for wildlife.  The park itself is huge, but there is little in the way of infrastructure.  At Mweya there is a luxury lodge, a hostel, a campsite, a petrol station, the visitors centre and a small village.

At the park gate we paid $210 park fees for our 3 night stay and were told to pay for our camping at the centre.  When you pay your park fees you get a receipt which is your pass to get through the various security gates, so don't lose it.

We visited the centre, and they told us to go and set up our tent and pay them when the campsite attendant was on duty.  We bumped down the road, past the petrol station to where we had been told the campsite was located.  No tents were seen, but there was a group of young back packers sunbathing on what looked like an old airstrip.  We stopped and asked one of them if they knew where the campsite was, and she replied that we had reached it.

Karen did not look impressed - I think she had an idea of somewhere with high fences to keep the animals out and some nicely mown grass to put up the tent and maybe a nice ablutions block with hot showers.  But unfortunately this was what we had.

After getting the tent set up, on one of the few bits of ground level enough, another vehicle arrived and Dutch couple started to also set up camp.  This calmed Karen's nerves a little.  She also quickly got used to the resident warthogs, marabou storks and waterbuck which all wandered around a few yards away.

There are toilets and showers on the campsite, very basic and only cold water.  But very clean and looked after by a very friendly lady.  There is also a banda/shelter for cooking in and sheltering from the thunderstorms that blow through every afternoon.

Uganda, we need to talk about speed bumps

Uganda loves speed bumps.  Its as if they cannot get enough of the pot holes on the murram roads, that when there is a lovely piece of flat tarmac then it seems to be obligatory to stick a million speed bumps on it.

I assume this is to slow down the mental minibus drivers (it doesn't, they just swerve off the road to miss them).  But when your average speed is already only about 20mph and your undercarriage is already completely wrecked, a 3 foot high speed bump is NOT REQUIRED.

It would be so much better if the speed bumps were removed and the materials then put into the pot holes.  Problem solved.

The Equator

Great to add this photo to this one

Namibia 2007

Tyre problems

Leaving the Primate Lodge, we were presented with our bar bill - pretty reasonable for a few beers, glasses of wine and softies.  I then asked for the bill for all the food we had eaten, to be informed that the $120us we had paid for 3 nights in the tree house, also included full board.  Even a packed lunch to take away with us.

This seems incredibly good value for money and I can only assume that the lodge had made a mistake.  I pointed this out to them, but they insisted that I owed nothing more.

An hour up the road took us into Fort Portal - a pretty little colonial town, with a bustling main street.  We needed fuel, so pulled into a petrol station.  As we did so, a scruffy man tapped on the window and said, "muzungu - your tyre is flat, your tyre is flat". Suspecting some kind of scam, I got out for a look only to find the tyre was looking a bit on the flat side.

The scruffy man just happened to one of the tyre repair guys with a business right by the filling station - had he just stuck something in the tyre?  we'll never know.  However he soon had the tyre off and filled 3 holes, before a much more menacing guy came over to demand some money.  After I gave him some he demanded some more "for the labour" so I gave him another small note.  All in all about $10 to fix the puncture - were we scammed?

We shopped in Fort Portal at the Andrews supermarket on the main street, plenty of stuff for eating in there and reasonably cheap.  But the best buy was from a small boy outside in the street who was selling bags of freshly shelled peas at 10p a go.