Robinson World Tour Part 2: Unique Uganda and Quick Kenya

The final leg of our African tour had us cross into Kenya. There was a noticeable difference in the quality and quantity of housing. Kenya is developing a middle class and nowhere is this more apparent than on the roads as this country has a lot more cars than we had been experiencing. This lead to lots of traffic and traffic jams, especially in Nairobi (the country's capital). They have many roundabouts controlled by traffic lights and traffic police but no one pays much attention to them so it is survival of the pushiest. Heightened security was very evident in Nairobi. Everywhere we went you were airport type scanned before you entered (including grocery stores, restaurants, etc.). There was also an armed presence all around the city. This is all to be expected considering what has happened there in the past year.

We didn’t spend much time in Kenya and quickly headed into Uganda. This country was very surprising. It is very physically beautiful and the people are extremely friendly. As our truck rumbled down the “highways” –for lack of a better term- kids would run for a chance to wave at us. We felt like rock stars and this was very poignant as we passed this one school and hundreds of kids ran screaming towards the road just to yell out the all too familiar phrase “how are youuuuuu?” Even the adults beamed when we would wave at them.

The purpose of our visit to Uganda was to trek and track the mountain gorillas. We did stop first to do a chimp trek to break us into the trekking routine and we were not disappointed. We saw a mother and her baby. The only clear pictures we got were of the baby and those are below. After our trek we headed to our basic campground. I’ve included pictures of the facilities. The pit toilet (hole in the floor) and shawer. They try hard with the English but struggle at times much to our delight. As dinner was being prepped we were treated to a make shift performance by some of the local school children. Once the rest of the village found out what had happened they repeated the performance with almost all of the local kids participating. It was extremely entertaining. I took a video using the ipad and the kids were soooooo excited to see themselves. It took a lot of coercing to get them to leave and go to bed. They walk 2 hours every morning just to get to school and then two hours back. They left the next morning around 5:30am.

Our journey now had us at Lake Bunyoni, our base camp for the Gorilla trek. This lake is over 2 km deep and high up in the mountains surrounded by dormant volcanoes. Our group was split up to trek 3 different families of gorillas. We entered Bwindi National Park (The impenetrable forest is its nickname and for good reason – the slopes are very steep and covered in vegetation). Our group was lucky as we didn’t have to venture too far (only about 3 km into the park) before we ran into our family. The first part of the family of 9 that we saw were two large black back males (in the trees) and the very large (200 + kilo) silver back dominant male (he was on the ground resting beside a tree less than 7 meters from us). We have lots of photos but I had to narrow it down to just a few. Do you know why Gorillas have big nostrils – cause they have big fingers. Find the photo that verifies this. After sitting and admiring the silver back for a while he decided to get up and ramble straight towards us. The guide told us that if her charges we were to remain calm and stand our ground (he didn’t say anything about soiling oneself). Thankfully he didn’t charge but he did get very close. I’ve included a video of this occurrence (check out the expression of Maureen after the silver back goes by – this totally sums up the experience) and one of a black back climbing down a tree. After the silver back moved away we headed further into the forest and were treated to a viewing of the lone baby in the group. Trekking and finding these limited and amazing creatures was awe inspiring. I’ve included photos of our awesome mountain top views from our lunch spot after the trek.

Just when we though Uganda couldn’t deliver any more we stopped in Jinga on the shores of Lake Victoria which is the source of the Nile River. Here we took the opportunity to go white water rafting on the Nile River. Our guide was totally snapped and that’s what made the day even more exciting. I’ve included photos of the rafting (thanks Todd for the Go Pro it is really coming in handy) and the view from our river side tents. (G-Adventures upgraded us all to awesome permanent tents)

Our tour was coming to an end and we limped our way out of Uganda back into Kenya for our remaining four days. Our first stop was a game drive in Lake Nakuru National Park in western Kenya. I don’t know if it was all of the awesome experiences and wildlife we had seen so far but the excitement seemed to be waning for most of our group as we went through the park. The big thing we were looking forward to was seeing rhinos. Lisa and I had seen black rhinos earlier on in the tour but in this park we were treated to white rhinos and plenty of them. There were supposed to be flamingos there but the water levels have been unexplainably high for the past five years and they are no longer there. The last day in Kenya had us going to see the hippos and bird like in Lake Naivasha. It is here that we found out that six fishermen had already lost their lives to the hippos and it was only the end of March. The hippos may seem slow and nonthreatening but think again.

Getting out of Kenya was also an interesting experience as security was very intense. I’ll explain more when we get home.