Uganda: Day 7&8
After the savannah of Queen Elizabeth National Park, we headed through lots of villages into a more hill country on route to see Chimps in the Kibali Forest. There were a lot of children along the road who waved when we passed. They know the safari jeeps carry "muzungus" so when they see one coming they get excited.
Kids along the road to Kibale
Just before we got to our lodge, we came across a school. Since Leo had a few things left over from the first school visit he asked Habib if we could stop. Leo got out with a few small school supplies and the kids surrounded him. He eventually found a teacher and gave him the supplies.
an impromptu stop at a school
Up the road just about a half mile was our Lodge. The Ndali Lodge to be exact. It was situated up on the top of a hill looking over an extinct volcano.
view from the Ndali Lodge
The lodge has about 8 cottages and two very sweet, well behaved ridgeback dogs that patrol the grounds so monkeys dont come into the cottages and take stuff....seriously.
Leo in the welcome area of Ndali lodge
We spent two nights here and it was very relaxing. the cottages were very nice but the food was amazing. The reason most people stay here is because it is reasonably close to where you go tracking Chimps in the kibale forrest. Before we did that we went on a bird watching hike in the Bigodi swamp.
Baboons on the trail in the Bigodi swamp
The hike in the swamp took about two hours. We saw some nice birds and lots of monkeys in the trees. After that it was time to drive up the road to go on the Chimp trek. We were both pretty tired from the swamp hike and it was really humid and hot but we went. There's no guarantee that you will see chimps on the trek. They are wild and the forrest is fairly large so tracking them down isn't easy. Lucky for us there was a group of them hanging around right outside the check-in desk to the forrest.
Chimps at the forrest entrance.
Even though we were very close to a group of chimps, we still went on the trek. We paid for it after all. So off on this three hour hike into the jungle. At least this trek was flat and not as tangled as the gorilla trek. We never saw the chimps again so it was a bit of a bust.
