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18th April 2006

It was an early start as we left Kitale at just after 7am, to get Marissa and Illyana (the student doctors who were staying there too) back to their mission hospital before ward rounds started at 9am. Like yesterday Sam volunteered to sit in the back of the van, and the other two girls squeezed in the front for the hour-long drive. We left them at the basic hospital they were volunteering at (looking very doctor-y in their white coats) and drove towards the Ugandan border.

Not liking ‘big’ border crossings we decided on taking the southernmost border, at Busia, rather than the main border crossing at Malaba. After a bit of a drive on muddy roads cross-country to get there (including fording an overflowing river) we got to the border just before lunchtime.

The usual array of moneychangers, beggars and people trying to be our ‘clearance agents’ appeared and tried to ingratiate themselves with us, however we managed to clear out of Kenya in short order without any help - an unwelcome surprise was that we were charged $40 ‘road tax’ by the Kenyan customs people for using their (often potholed) roads - this is apparently the charge for a month, you get the first 7 days in Kenya free and after that you pay for a full month.

On the Ugandan side it was nice and friendly and getting a visa on the border ($30 each) was no trouble. Another ‘road tax’ sting on the Ugandan side was 38,500 Ugandan Shillings (about $20) for 2 weeks road tax. We were glad we had our insurance ‘Yellow Card’ as that saved us having to buy insurance from a number of locals hanging around the border. [we later heard that Yellow Cards are no longer valid in Uganda, we are not sure how true this is - our Yellow Card has Uganda listed on it but not sure if that makes any difference?]

Through the border in less than an hour, we drove off into Uganda. The country is very green, lush and fertile, and the people seemed pretty friendly. The temperature hotted up too as we descended and drove along the shores of Lake Victoria. We passed a new factory and rice paddies for the ‘Tilda’ rice company, evidence that apparently Uganda has one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. The roads were generally very good, except a short stretch near Jinja where they were re-surfacing.

We stopped in Jinja to get some local money from an ATM, and then crossed the Owen Falls Dam, which as the outlet of Lake Victoria is the ‘Source of the Nile’, the mighty river that winds it’s way over 6,000km to the Mediterranean, and the river we have been following (more or less) since January in Egypt.

The Source of the Nile

We drove on to Kampala, which seemed although not being quite as developed as Nairobi, seemed safe and friendly. It seemed hard to imagine that it was not many years ago that Uganda was a shattered wreck from Idi Amin’s years of dictatorship. We checked into the Backpacker’s Hostel, and met up again with William and Jean, the South Africans who had left Nairobi a few days before us.

19th April 2006

Our main priority in Kampala was to obtain permits to see the mountain gorillas in the far south-west of the country, there are only a few families of gorillas that are habituated to humans, and there are only 8 people allowed to go and see each family each day. This means that there aren’t many permits available, and at peak times they can be booked up for months in advance. You have to book at the headquarters of the Ugandan Wildlife Authority in Kampala, so we decided to head into town to sort this out.

Somehow in our travels we so far had avoided travelling by the African institution that is a ‘matatu’, a Toyota minibus that runs specific routes around and between towns, travels at life-threatening speeds, and carries as many passengers there are seats, times two. The best and cheapest way of getting into Kampala from the campsite was a matatu so we hopped on a passing one and laid our lives in the hands of God, and the matatu driver. The vans often have slogans painted on the front or back, we were glad ours said ‘I love Samona Jelly’ rather than others we have seen which have said ‘Death or Glory’ or ‘Beg for Mercy’!

Arriving alive in Kampala city centre matatu station, which was the most jam-packed, heaving place I think I’ve ever seen, we escaped down a side street and got our bearings. We wandered up the hill a bit to try and find the UWA offices, which were supposed to be behind the Sheraton hotel. After walking around for a while without success and asking a couple of people who didn’t have a clue what we were were looking for, we popped into an internet cafe and discovered the UWA had moved to new offices on the edge of the city so we were looking in the wrong place! Oh well, we’ll try again tomorrow…

The return journey to the Kampala on the ‘matatu’ was for some reason twice as expensive as the journey into town (we had been told before this was the case, so we weren’t being ripped-off, but it’s bizarre!), and we survived this too, despite there being well over the officially allowed 14 passengers at one point!

20th April 2006

Now we knew where to go, we drove out to the UWA offices and were pleasantly surprised to find plenty of vacancies to go and visit the gorillas - being the off-season helped I guess. We handed over our considerable wedge and booked to hopefully see the gorillas at Bwindi Inpenetrable Forest on Monday, four days hence.

21st April 2006

Our last day in Kampala, we headed a little out of town to Entebbe, on the shores of Lake Victoria, and visited the Ugandan Wildlife Education Centre. This is kind of a zoo, but the only animals there are ones that have been rescued from national parks or poachers and the animals would be unable to re-habilitate into the wild. We saw the very rare shoebill bird, white rhino (the only ones in Uganda, the rest having been poached in the wars over the years), and a very lazy lion sunning himself…

The Shoebill, a very rare and strange-looking bird

A lazy lion letting it all ‘hang loose’!

We went for a walk through some woods to try and find the leopard enclosure, we very soon found that we were in the middle of an area populated by spiders three or four inches across, who had woven webs ten feet across or more along the path. When we disturbed the webs they scarily moved towards us! After snapping a few quick pictures we beat a quick retreat!

22nd April 2006

We left Kampala and drove to the south-west of Uganda, to Lake Bunyoni, which is most of the way to the Bwindi forest where we will hopefully see the mountain gorillas. After one false stop we arrive at Lake Bunyoni Overland Resort, which is beautifully located on the shore of the lake, which has steep-sided valleys dropping sharply into the deep water, with small dugout canoes paddling around on it.

We find somewhere to camp amongst a group of about 15 from an overland truck, there are another couple of overland trucks at the campsite. We have a tasty dinner and a beer watching the sun set over the lake and the mountains beyond.

23rd April 2006

It’s pouring with rain in the morning, and the overland truck we are camped amongst leaves at 6am! The sergeant-major approach of the driver in getting everyone on board in time to leave reminds us why we didn’t want to go on an overland truck trip through Africa!

We pack up in the rain and drive on a muddy, potholed road to Buhoma, the entrance to Bwindi forest. At one point we are only a kilometre or two from the Congo border, and the people seem to be less friendly in this part of Uganda - there’s less waves and more shouts and scowls as we pass - maybe this is because they see rich tourists heading through to visit the gorillas every day and they don’t get a lot of the benefits from it, indeed many of the local people have been evicted from their traditional lands when Uganda created the national parks in this area.

We camp at the community camp at the entrance to Bwindi forest, which is a pleasant place up in the rainforest, with the sounds of the jungle all around. Sam is a little intimidated by the steep mountainside opposite the camp, which is apparently where the gorillas hang out! We meet a Dutch/Australian couple who have been to see the ‘H’ Group of gorillas that we will hopefully be seeing tomorrow, they say the gorillas are just 15 minutes out from the park headquarters where the tracking starts, so maybe it won’t be such a bad trek through the jungle after all?!

24th April 2006

Up early to say hi to some ancient relatives. The weather thankfully is good this morning. We meet our group of 7 visitors at the Bwindi park headquarters at 8am and after equipping ourselves with walking sticks and tucking our trousers into our socks (not very fashionable but apparently advisable to keep ants out of your pants), we head off into the jungle.

It is quickly apparent that our group of gorillas have moved from their prime spot near the park HQ and we head up and up the very steep trail up the mountainside. The jungle is thick, with tall trees blocking most of the sun, and many ferns, broken branches and bushes at ground level, that our guide hacks through with a machete. We can now see why it is called the Inpenetrable Forest!

We continue up and up, following a trail of gorilla dung. After 3 hours trekking uphill we still haven’t found their nests, where they would have slept for the night last night. We leave the small trail we are on at one point and have to start hacking our way through the bushes to the top of the mountain. It’s exhausting work for all of us and Sam is especially red-faced!

Hacking our way through the jungle…

Very quickly on the other side of the mountain we come across their nest for the previous night, surrounded by gorilla dung, and accompanied by fire ants which try to crawl up everyone’s trousers!

It’s not far from here we come across the gorillas, first we see one or two chomping on branches from bushes, then we see a huge silverback having a snooze just a couple of metres in front of us. There’s a few babies, lots of females - 21 gorillas in all. The babies are climbing the trees in front of us while the adults are quite camera-shy and like to hide behind bushes just as you try and take photos of them! Still we got a few good photos despite the heavy vegetation and the dark conditions in some places.

You can work out what the silverback is doing in this photo for yourself…!

You are only allowed an hour with the gorillas to prevent humans disturbing them too much, and all too soon our time with them was over, and we trekked back down the mountain - easier than up, but quite slippery and we fell over a few times. Shortly before we got back to the park HQ it started pouring with rain, thankfully the rain had held off for the rest of the day. After 6 hours trekking up and down mountains we were knackered and retired to the campsite for a beer, dinner and an early night!

25th April 2006

We left Buhoma early in the morning and headed north through Queen Elizabeth National Park. We were originally planning to spend some time here but decided to just drive through on the main road - we didn’t see much in the way of wildlife so were glad we didn’t pay the expensive park fees to stay in the park proper.

Baboon roadblock in QENP - looking for cheese sandwiches!

View over Western Uganda

After a hair-raising drive up a road that on our GPS was supposed to be the main road but turned out to be a washed-out farm track, we ended up at a campsite near one of the crater lakes south of Fort Portal. After a few long hard days of driving and trekking we needed a day off!

26th April 2006

We didn’t do a lot except a bit of laundry and checking out the car, which after the drive on bad roads was filthy! Sam saw some interesting-looking lizards and took some photos…

27th April 2006

We drove back to Kampala on the good tarmac road from Fort Portal, and spend the night at Red Chilli campsite on the outskirts of the city. They have free internet so we take advantage of this and research whether we want to do a whitewater rafting trip at the source of the Nile (no as apparently there’s better deals to be had at Victoria Falls), and also researched whether Sam should do a Biology degree when she gets back to England (maybe, if we can find the right course!)

28th April 2006

A day spent relaxing and doing a few chores before heading back to Kenya…

29th April 2006

We leave Kampala early and head back towards Kenya. We return through the same border post we came in through, so we know where all the relevant offices are and can confidently rebuff any attempts by locals to try and ‘help’ us with ‘clearance’ or ‘documents’ etc. We head back to Raj’s campsite in Eldoret for the night.

30th April 2006

Another day’s driving to Nairobi… there’s a really bad section of road between Nakuru and Naivasha that they are resurfacing, we saw one of the resurfacing teams and now understand why progress is so slow…

Stop eating lunch and do some work…!

1st May 2006

May Day being a public holiday in Kenya, nothing much was open so we did nothing much!

2nd May 2006

We went shopping - for a couple of Biology books for Sam, for some track rod ends for the car (we think there’s a little knock in the steering and it seems to be coming from the track rod ends, so we buy a couple from the parts place we know in Nairobi and will fit them some time… we also stock up in Nairobi’s fantastic supermarkets on food as in the next few days we plan to head through the Masai Mara, out the other side near Lake Victoria and into Tanzania, then back through the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater to Arusha.

3rd May 2006

We leave early for the Masai Mara, which is a five hour drive from Nairobi on poor roads. As we approach the park the roads deteriorate rapidly, at one stage due to the rains we were driving for several miles through huge muddy puddles and more or less down a muddy river that it is impossible to get out and check the depth of. We are followed closely by a local in a Toyota pickup through the puddles and rivers, he’s obviously using us as a guide as to whether the water is too deep or not!

We see quite a lot of wildlife outside the park, including zebra, dik dik, wildebeest and giraffe. There is also a lot of local Masai people in their traditional dress of a red blanket and… well not a lot else really!

We enter the Masai Mara reserve as we planned to camp at a public campsite in the middle of the park. Within five minutes of entering the park we come across a pride of lions, including some cubs! It’s pouring with rain though and the lions aren’t looking too happy about it!

Lions in the rain

Also within five minutes inside the park we are sliding sideways down the muddy road because of the rains and the slickness of the surface… this is not going to be an easy drive.

The road gets worse and the mud gets deeper, and after sliding off the road a couple more times into the ditch we decide to abort our attempt to get to the campsite in the centre of the park and return to the main gate to stay at a campsite called Mara Springs just outside the gate. On the way back we come across a herd of elephants ambling along the road.

We arrived at the campsite and met Elliott, a safari tour driver with Odyssey Safaris, who we had met in Barclays Bank in Nairobi, where he was with a group of four Americans who he was taking on safari to the Masai Mara. He had recommended the campsite to us and was pleased to see us…

4th May 2006

In the morning the rain had thankfully abated, and we leave the campsite to go into the park and hopefully have a better game viewing experience than the day before! Before we leave we are accosted by a man trying to collect park entrance fees off us, we are warned by Elliott not to pay him anything. Apparently until recently park fees were supposed to be paid at the campsite, but the park authorities stopped this because fees were going into people’s pockets rather than to fund the upkeep of the park as they should.

We drive into the park and head off to to try and find some wildlife. We quickly come across a minibus that has got stuck in the mud with a couple of hapless customers watching the driver trying to get himself unstuck. A quick shift into difflock and we’ve dragged him out, and the driver’s pointed us in the direction of some elephants and cheetahs, which were easy to find by the half dozen minibuses gatherered around them!

Elephant family

Can you spot the cheetahs and elephants?!

Cheetahs again

We continue off across the park in search of the lions we saw yesterday. The wide open plains are certainly impressive, but we were expecting a far greater concentration of herbivores like zebra, wildebeest and so on than we saw. We drove miles without seeing a single animal. I think this is because many of the animals migrate between the Serengeti and the Masai Mara (all part of the same ecosystem even though they are two different parks in two different countries), and at this time of year they are mostly in the Serengeti.

Where is everybody?!

We head down to the Sand River Gate, which is the border between the Masai Mara and the Serengeti, to see if we can cross into Tanzania there rather than have to go all the way around the long away. We meet an official who can sign us out of Kenya (but not stamp our passport or carnet), and he claims there is a full border post on the Tanzanian side with customs and immigration. There is a strong hint however that some kind of bribe or monetary assistance to help with our passage across the border would be necessary.

We leave him and head further into the Masai Mara, seeing hippo and crocodile in the Mara River.

We also saw a very colourful lizard at one of the checkpoints in the park, which Sam ran around trying to photograph!

We finally reach the campsite where we thought we would stay the previous night, and were glad we didn’t, as it was a small clearing in a thicket of trees with nothing other than hole in the ground toilets. We decide to head for a different campsite near one of the gates, still debating whether we should contine to try and cross the rest of the park or head back towards the main gate.

Along the way I hear a clonking noise from the front driver’s side wheel and get out to investigate… a brake caliper bolt has fallen out and the caliper is bouncing around on the rough roads. How this could happen I’m not sure, maybe I forgot to put threadlock on the bolt when reassembling the hub a couple of weeks previously in Nairobi and it’s worked loose?

We drive slowly back towards the main Masai Mara gate, as we saw a garage just outside which might have a bolt that will get us to Nairobi to buy a proper one. Half way there I try the brakes and realise we have very little brake force available - bringing the car to a stop using the gears I discover the brake line has snapped with all the bouncing around of the caliper. Oh dear, no brakes!

We continue slowly back to the main gate, passing a gaggle of minibuses surrounding what we guessed was the pride of lions we saw yesterday - lacking proper brakes we decided not to try and take a look in case we couldn’t stop! We end up back at the main gate - bringing the car to a stop by driving up the kerb into their flower bed! We remove the broken brake line and Sam goes to find a mechanic who can fix it, while I try and find someone with a bolt that will hold the caliper together until we get to Nairobi.

After less than an hour we have the brake line fixed and a lashed-up bolt which might just work, and we head back to the Mara Springs campsite just as it starts raining (again!). We spend a pleasant evening with the four American guys who had been on an all-day game drive in the Mara as well, they were filthy with mud from having to try and push their minibus when it got stuck…

5th May 2006

We leave early to drive slowly back to Nairobi, hoping to get back before the Land Rover garage closes and we can buy the proper bolt for our brake caliper. Within 10 miles of leaving the Masai Mara the temporary bolt has fallen out and we’ve got the same problem with the brakes again. I try using cable ties, which work for a while, then we use a piece of steel wire until we get to Narok, the next town along the road, and we try and find someone with a bolt we can steal off a Land Rover being scrapped or similar.

We find a garage in Narok with a Land Rover that we think is suitable - they take the bolt out but it’s slightly different to what we need. Still, it will hopefully get us back to Nairobi.

We drive uneventfully back to Nairobi, head to the Land Rover spares place and buy another bolt, plus a spare. Now we have a spare, you can guarantee it won’t happen again!

6th May 2006

Up early to leave Kenya, hopefully for the last time! We stop off to get the car washed - he was filthy after our trip to the Mara and there were three guys working on him to get him clean - he sparkled and we were quite proud when they were done.

It was a smooth, quiet road to the Tanzanian border post at Namanga. The border post was reasonably self-explanatory and for the first time we experienced nobody trying to be our ‘helper’ at the border, and not even anyone wanting to change any money. Maybe it’s because it was a Saturday, or maybe the border was so easy nobody needs any help.

We encountered a slightly corrupt guy at the Kenyan customs office who tried to insist we had to pay him a ‘toll’ for the road to the border, we disagreed and paid him nothing other than the ‘overtime’ fee we had had to pay when we had re-entered Kenya the previous Saturday.

On the Tanzanian side it was simple and quick, the visa was $50 each (ouch), and the charges for the car were $25 for a month’s road tax. Then we were off down the smooth tarmac road to Arusha, spying Mount Meru in the distance. The road climbed rapidly to over 2000m and after a little rain we arrived in Arusha, and camped at the Masai Campsite just on the edge of town.

After some dinner and a game of pool with a group of Germans camping with us, we decided to make for bed… then we realised the camping area was also a car park for the all-night disco in the camp bar, and we had to suffer booming music and cars revving their engines and driving inches from our roof tent ladder until 3 in the morning. Not impressed!

7th May 2006

We slept in late to try and get some sleep after being kept awake most of the previous night by the disco. Then we decided to try and change the track rod ends on the Donkey’s steering arm - we had bought new ones in Nairobi to try and cure a slight knock we were hearing in the steering. The old ones were rusted on the track rod and wouldn’t budge until we were lent some pipe wrenches by our neighbour, a Swiss guy called Urs (hope that’s spelt right) in a 6 wheel drive Pinzgauer who has been travelling for three years!

With the new track rods on, we relaxed and chilled out before another meal in the restaurant and a promise that the music would not be so loud tonight, so we might actually get some sleep!

8th May 2006

We were debating amongst ourselves whether to visit the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater… we worked out the costs of doing it ourselves, for one day in each, was going to be over $500 for the two of us in our own car, plus diesel and food. Also, after our experience in the Masai Mara we were prepared to pay a little more to let someone else wreck their car, rather than us wreck ours! We checked out a couple of budget safari companies to see what their prices were like, and the cost was going to be over $1000 for the two of us, too expensive for us!

We decided to skip the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater, as $500 would buy us nearly a month in some of the National Parks further south, and the animals are the same no matter where you see them. The only things we would particularly miss were the sight of the crater itself (supposed to be very impressive), also the famous Wildebeest migration which was in the southern part of the Serengeti at the moment.

9th May 2006

We awoke to more rain, and decided to head south out of Tanzania to leave the rainy season behind - we’d had enough of rain and mud by this stage!

It was an uneventful drive on the main road south, stopping at ‘Tembo Camp’ on the main road about 250km north of Dar Es Salaam. The place looked like an abandoned military barracks, but let us camp the night…

10th May 2006

Still raining, we headed south towards Dar. Not long on the road, we were flagged down by a local policeman at one of the numerous police checkpoints on the road. Normally we are waved through but on this occasion he wanted to stop and have a chat. Sam was driving, and the conversation went something like this…

“May I see your driving licence please”
(Sam hands over her international driving permit, we don’t care if the police keep this and don’t hand it back as it only cost us 5 pounds to get and Sam has two of them!)
“This is a copy” he says
“No it’s not” says Sam
“Do you have anything for me?”
“No, sorry!”
“I’m hungry” says the policeman
“Well you had better go and have your lunch then!”
“Do you have money for soda?”
“No, sorry!”

Realising that he’s not going to get any money or gifts out of us, he lets us go… so we have had our first experience with a corrupt traffic policeman…!

The rest of the drive to Dar Es Salaam was uneventful, Dar is an unspectacular city, nothing much to hang around for. We took a small ferry across the bay to the beaches south of the city, and checked into Kipepeo Camp, about 8km south of the ferry, which had a great location on a pristine white beach…

Nice beach, shame about the clouds!

11th May 2006

We had come to the coast to see what the weather was like, to try and decide if we wanted to take the boat to Zanzibar, just off the coast, for a few days. Well today it was raining, on and off, all day, so we pretty much decided straight away that we would be skipping Zanzibar and heading on south to Malawi where supposedly the rains have finished for the season.

I changed the engine oil on the car, for the fourth time this trip, and we went for a little swim in the Indian Ocean (it was warm, despite it raining!).

12th May 2006

We headed west away from Dar to Mikumi, where we drove through Mikumi National Park on the main road. We were very lucky to see a herd of elephants crossing the main road just in front of us, the herd including a tiny baby elephant which was only about 2-3 feet tall and must have been almost a newborn!

13th May 2006

Another long day’s drive to Mbeya, close to the border to Malawi, where we camped at a Christian Mission station near the town. It was still raining! Time to leave Tanzania and the wet season behind!