I was packed and ready to go, my special hire taxi came at 6.30am and i grabbed a quick breakfast and went off to see the chimps or 8am. Or so I had hoped. When we got to the NP I had enough for the trek and to get me back to Kampala…. or so I thought. I had about 120,000 and they wanted 176,000!! Im a dumbass, I thought it was $25, about 50,000. Gutted is the appropriate word. I didn’t have enough money, didn’t really know anyone there well enough to beg a loan (although there were some dutch people from the GH) and the town didn’t have an ATM and if it did the tour started in 10 minutes….

Some dutch guy suggested I do a swamp walk which was cheaper but upon asking that needed to be booked outside the NP. Not enough schilling, very little in the way of dollars,I was going nowhere…. I had a revelation ,’Can I pay in sterling?’ and the answer was yes, I checked my leather belt and had £50 in there that I had virtually forgotten, just the right ammount! I handed it over, I didn’t want to spend that much, I thought it was about £13 but I was there, what could I do? I joined the briefing and got put in a group of a german and dutch couple. We had the lovely Harriet as our guide and set off into the forest. She pointed out a few trees and plants, we stopped to look at some monkeys and she gave us a pep talk. We then walked for about an hour listening for them and asking the other groups over the walkie talkie if there were any sightings. Not a sausage, we heard some noise and the left the trail in that general direction. It was pretty dense, I had a minor shock when i briefly stopped at the back to change my video tape and then dropped my fleece, I nipped back to pick it up and couldn’t see anyone! I guess thats how you get lost so easily.

The only great apes we saw were other tourists all converging on the same spot where the noise came from, but then apparently there were some up in the trees. You could barely see about 3 of them, mostly from the dark outline up in the canopy. No big group, no forest floor, no 3 feet away… we waited around, everyone trying to get a better view point but it was very dissappointing. Ok, well, I saw them, but magical experience it was not. I wish I had left my belt at home :{ We walked back to the road which took about another hour, not much in the way of wildlife, got back in the taxi and got my bag and off to get the bus back to Kampala.

Doing bugger all isn’t too bad, I went to look at the local market but couldn’t see anything worth buy despite my best efforts. I needed thread to repair my backpack and didn’t see any. I had fun and games at the local internet cafe with their appaling connectionn meaning I wasted 30 minutes faffing around while getting electric shocks from the PC. The guy was saying something about earth the building, or not, I had no idea, stupid bastard. I found somewhere else that worked and uploaded by blog and caught up on international news. Interesting Thai Coup I was missing, shame I passed on Burma… I had another apalling meal at the Ruwenzori GH in town, a egg sandwich is NOT a fried egg on fried bread, salad is NOT fruit salad (i sent it back and eventually got some fruit) and since when is Nescafe ‘African Coffee’ ?? They charged me 50p for milk too, bastards! Just the kind of place that really hate tourists and dont want you there.

The dutch couple at dinner had been to see the chimps that day and said it was great, they were all on the forest floor, they got really close to them and there were loads of them. Sounded good!

Didn’t do much, walked into town and got trapped by the rain which really came down at 2pm. Tried to book the chimp trekking for Wednesday, paid for the taxi only to be told it was full on Wednesday. Dammit, check before you take my money!! Had to settle for Thursday.

I walked back into the town and hired a bike from the local tour company to go off and see the nearby caves. It was a nice ancient design with the crank all wobbly and off center. One gear so you had to push it up hills and a real bonshaker when going down them at speed. After a 8km ride along dusty roads, constantly waving at children laughting at the crazy Mzungu I got to the ‘caves’. Edward showed me around telling me a facinating story about how the cave came to be (its a big breast!). We walked into the jungle for 2 minutes and there it was, although to be accurate it was just a limestone formed overhang, no dark passages to explore, although the slightly camp Edward might have a sugestion for that :p We walked a bit more loking at a few more ‘semi caves’ and they really didn’t believe in cutting back the foilage, I think the fat americans would have a few problems getting through. I agreed to a quick walk around the nearby crater lake too (I had another £1.50 burning a hole in my pocket) and we set off up the hill. Had a good view of the town and saw a dry crater and one with a lake in the middle. The second had a big hill at one end too which I took the option to climb, didn’t make any difference as to how much it would shortly rain and when it came we were nearly at the top. Glad I brought my umbrella I can tell you, it pissed it down! We splooshed back after a few pics and then i sat waiting out the rain with a couple local women watch me unsuccessfully try to attach my umbrella to my backback so I could leave in the rain. It kept me busy for a while and I risked it when there was a lull and raced a local guy back in to town. He always caught me on the hills! The guest house was full so I moved into the drivers room which would have been a good saving if only someone hadn’t cancelled and gotten me moved back into a double. Dinner is a social affair there and most of the guests sit down together and pass the dishes around. Monday night was Germans, Danes, Dutch and me. At least I speak pretty good international English.

I hadn’t packed, I was just so tired, I didn’t set my alarm and got up about 10am. No bus for me, I was going to have to take the worse option, a ’2 1/2 hour’ Matatu to Fort Portal :( Stupid lazy tourist! Breakfast and then off the taxi place, at least the sun was shining, as nice a day to die as any I have seen. The journey was thankfully without incident, but we had to swap halfway there, it took about 5 hours and at one point we had 24 souls in the same bus (or 25 if you include the chicken that was sitting at my feet. Poor little bugger!). I hate it when you can’t see out of the windscreen because of people crouching in the bus, hate it. I would have happily seen the driver arrested and us all have to carry on with someone else. Greedy bastards the lot of them. I checked into the Ruwenzori View GH and prepared to spend a few days relaxing in a nice western run place, they were busy but had a spare twin. Nice place.

I left at 5am the next day, quite why they have to have so many buses all leaving at the same tmie, all on the same route, all not considering about leaving until full and all driving around for 1+ hours after the ‘departure time’ is beyond me. If they left at fixed times people would be there or miss it. Pretty frustrating, but when you’re ready for the idea you just wait and dont get too pissed off, what can you do? At least the buses are big ones, so they rule the road and hopefully give you a figthing chnce if you crash. Most even have seatbelts if you can dig them uot from under the seats, you might have to bodge together a couple of belts to get them to work too :p I bought a ticket to Mbrara, which is about 2/3 of the way back to kampala and my ultimate destination was fort portal where i was planning on seeing the chimps in the nearby NP. I slept most of the way up there, put on your music and sleeping mask and try to ignoring the person hiting the back of your seat or hitting your window to sell you some deat animal on a stick. I jumped off the bus and had to find an ATM as priority no one. I wandered about town sweating in the midday sun with my backpack weighing heavily on me, but i was stinky anyway and couldn’t get any worse. I restocked my funds and then thought about going on to fort portal that afternoon, as it was only about 12.30pm and enough time. Back at the bus station I was told if I waited in a certain place a bus would come about 5pm… bit too vague for me. I could take a shared taxi, which was the worst option as they really pack them in and any accident is a deathtrap for all concerned. The only other choice was a bus next day at 6.30am, looked like it was a night in Mbrara then! I got a desperatley bad hotel room for a couple of quid, no shower, just a bath, but it was too late to move and the shower option was much worse. All the linen was numbered for the room, I was in room 21 and stole a towel from 23. I dont know where mine was. I soaked some of my clothes and went to find some food. I passed by the post office and went in to ask when the post bus went to Fort Portal, if at all. It was sitting outside about to leave. I had had a guy nearly shouting at me in the bus station telling me to go and get on a Matatu to get to Fort Portal, I guess he didn’t understand its nice to have some idea of options, ie spend the night and go the next day, instead he thought Im disrespecting him because I didn’t instantly go jump into a 4 wheeled coffin. Some other guy listening to him ranting helpfully told me I was in ‘Black Africa’. Didn’t I just know it :p So I missed the post bus and since it was saturday there would be no service the next day. Bah. I had half the lunch I wanted and then the power came back on and I could order the rest :} Power cuts and load shedding were a constant source of frustration and annoyance in Uganda, you never knew if you were going to be able to charge something up or just have the lights go out at the most inconvinient time. The town wasn’t much, I went looking for a brush to help clean my clothes, which was hampered by the general maliase on the part of the shop workers. ‘Do you have a smaller brush than this?’ ‘No, that is all we have’ /ponts to other shelf ‘Um, what about this one then?’ ‘Ah yes’ I guess most of them are just there to spot shoplifters, they dont do anything else. I did my laundry and it started raining, great. The petrol station over the road was having some kind of disco with a massive PA pumping out annoying music all day. It rained and rained, I went out for a quick meal and a PA on a truck parked up outside and played competing distorted musak with some ‘DJ’ yelling nonsense. I uploaded my blog in an internet cafe and hid in my room, still it rained. What a great saturday night…

I decided to stay another day and investigate, there was nothing much to do in town otherwise. Joseph met me at 9am the next day and we rode back out to have another look. I Itold him in no uncertain terms I would never send any money to buy something without being there and I would need a lawyer to ok it. Not some local guy either, someone in the capital. It was a backwards way of doing things but I wanted to go out, check it out again, see how the roads were in the vacinity, have a ponder but instead we spoke to dozens of people on the way and by the time we got as close to the penisullar as it was possible to get we had half a locals trooping behind us all chatting away. Asking Joseph for a translation was useless, I would ask what a 1 minute monologue from one of the alleged owner was and get a 2 second translation. We had a walk around the pensular, and it became clear there were actually 7 owners not 4, Just the kind of hassle I would have no interest in facing, all I would wanr to do would be to negotiate one price and let the owners split it however they see fit. WIth this in mind the couple of guys who owned part of it were very interested in showing me which potato and yam plantations were theres. I retained my healthy skeptism, especially when Joseph told me the lack of road would be taken care of by the local government and local people who would seemingly and spontaneously come together in some charitable act of improving the road already there and making a route for me. I doubt it…. the ammount of land needed to get a road there was probably 5 time the area of the penisular, hardly a good idea for the locals. I couldn’t even get an explanation as to where the quickest place to get from town via a boat would be ie drive from town to the first place on the lake and then travel on te water to the penisular. No one was going to want to hike through a load of fields in a muddy track for 20 minutes everytime they wanted to go anywhere, not even me. I was thinking more along the lines of buying and then leaving it for several years anyway, if at all, but the talk of free roads was setting off my bullshit alert. Even if it wasn’t the ideal place for a hostel it would make a great retirement place…

We got back to the bike and started off down the hill. I wasn’t a sealed road but was pretty dry, we passed several buildings and people would wave and say hello, making the occasional comment to Joseph as we passed in the local language. Someone was standing in the middle of the road and this is when it got a bit bizarre. As I rode towards him I moved to right and he moved to intercept, I moved left and slowed down to pass him as, har har, he was having some fun with the tourist. But as I passed him he grabbed the handle bars! Im guessing he could easily have pulled us over, but i pulled against him and kept my balance but he did something and the engine then revved wildly like I opened the throttle full and we sped down the road for a second. I instinctly pulled in the clutch and braked a bit, but not too much as the guy was now behind us. The engine was on full throttle and smoke was pouring out the back, i killed the ignition and rolled some more until we went 100 meters and then I stopped to kick it back up. The engine was still on full revs and some nearby chap helpfully pointed out that the throttle cable had been pulled out when he grabbed the handle bars and it was an easy fix to put it back in. Stupid bastard! If he did that to someone who didn’t have their wits about them we would have been shooting down the road and heading for a quick and nasty accident. Apparently the guy was the local nutter but Im very suspicious that he knew exactly what he was doing and wanted to see me lose it. Still it would do no good to go back and lamp the guy so we kicked her up and got the f**k out of dodge. We didn’t head right back to the main road and town, but took a detour to the crater of an extinct volcano that overlooked the town. We hiked up with some local kids and I took a few panoramic shots with my camera, as well as some pics of the kids which they loved. It was a ogod spot to look up to the three huge extinct volcanos overlooking south-western Uganda, northern Rwanda and south-eastern Congo. Indeed one of the peaks was the border for all three countries, which I will have to hike up one day. We rode back into town and I had been so trigger happy in the batwa village I had to go and back up my photos onto my hard disk. Its a great little item, and saves me having to carry multiple memory cards. Although if it gets nicked or dropped I will be heartbroken! We then went west past the hospital with the sealed road ending as soon as we’d gone by. The bike was a pain to drive with the gears being the wrong way around but I was getting the hang of it by now. It was a beautiful day and didn’t look like we would be getting the late afternoon rain which had drenched the town the previous day. We passed a couple of cops and waved hello, well, how were they going to stop me even if they wanted to :p We turned off onto a dirt track and went a couple of winding kilometers down to the lake, ending at a new guesthouse that was being built, alledgely with the aid of the swedish government… We walked around to a little jetty and Joseph was yelling across the lake to a guy in a dug out canoe. He paddled furiously towards us and pulled it up on the bank. He collected a bunch of small branches of trees to keep our bottoms (semi) dry and we wobbled aboard. Now my arse isn’t *that* fat but you had to wiggle to get your hips into the thing. I sat at the front, Joseph behind and the fisherma behind. We kicked off and went in search of some otters. Pausing only to collect me a paddle (whether to make it more authentic or to cut down the work load, I dont know) we followed the lake bank around to the ‘otters garden’ seeing planty of birds flitting around, bright red dragonflies buzzing over the water and fish splashing off the surface as we interupted their feeding. A couple of ducks dove in search of food and seemed to swim for ages before popping back up. Apart from the wildife there was no human sounds apart from the plop of the paddle in the water and my panting as I did some work! But no otters! We had to go about 4 km and didn’t see a sign of them. We pulled up on a small penisular with great views of the volcanos and climbed up to have a look. Joseph and the fisherman were chatting away and he told me it was for sale. He said it was about £2k, which seemed very cheap for where it was, but there was no road (or electricty, running water or mobile coverage). There were a few rows of various crops and apparently it was owned by about 4 farmers who were trying to sell their various shares. We took a few pics and got back into the canoe. I was sceptical but intrigued. On the way back my sceptism was abated somewhat by the fleeing glimpse of an otter in the distance. So they did exist and weren’t just made up to get tourists to a scam ‘for sale’ penisular.

7.30 was when I ordered my breakfast for the next day and at 7.30 they knocked on my door to tell me to come get breakfast, but was there any breakfast to be seen….? No. Grrr. F**king tell me its NOT READY and i can go get a shower and sort myself out instead of stitting there like a TOOL for 20 minutes! Or put it on the table at 7.30 and let it go cold if Im not there. I mean, what was the point of telling them the night before… There was a change of plan in the days routine as apparently the pygmies would be going to the market so we should see them first. Since they try to keep themselves to themselves and apparently have nothing to sell and no money this didn’t make much sense, but I wasn’t going to argue. We set off on the bike with Joseph driving and as nice as the guy is I will still feel bad for stating he is a shit driver. We wobbled and swayed about, the roads were pretty bad but he had no confidence. At one steepish rocky part I suggested I walk and I turned around and he had dropped the bike. I suggested I drive. I did a better job than him and we got up to the part we would walk from no problem. The bike was weird, it was like a moped but with a clutch, so the gear shifts were the wrong way around and caused constant confusion whenever I came to change gear. We walked up through 500 year old lava fields towards the village of the pygmies, looking at birds on the way as Joseph recounted various facts and touristy information. After a bit of a hike we made it up to the ‘village’, more a collection of huts. The Batwa (as they are local known) are indigenous forest people but have bee evicted from the jungle over recent years and now hold themselves seperate from the local population, living on land donated by sympathetic people and growing some small crops and keeping a few animals. They live in mostly tradition houses and they were shockingly poor. The kids were running around in rags and no shoes and they had tiny filthy huts. Joseph showed me around and said that when they die they are buried in their huts forcing the survivors to build anew. Other people arrived from nearby and they did the usual expected tourist thing and put on a bit of a song and dance for me. I have no idea if it was traditional or real, but they seemed to enjoy it and all worked up a sweat. The local ugandan boys who looked after the cattle watch in amusement as their batwa friends danced. It wasn’t exactly the most comfortable situation to be in, the poor people dancing for the rich white tourist, but what could I do? ‘I guess I’ll take some pictures then…’. They danced and sung for a good 20 minutes while the ‘chief’s wife banged a drum made of an old metal tin with some leather strapped on the end. Of course I had the usual problem of hw much should I give them. I had to give them someting, and there were a lot of people there, i guess… you can only believe what the person who speaks english tells you, but I dont think it was a scam. I gave them 50,000, since I didn’t have any twenties, about £14, which was probably 50p each. I dont know if it was too much, they seemed very happy with it anyway. They all started dancing again and all the men shook my hand. Was pretty sad. I wish they could all just go back into the forest and everyone would leave them alone. Including me. We hiked back down to where we left the motorbike and i gave Joseph a 10 minute lesson on how to take a photograph. He kept taking ‘a good one’ but since I put the flash on and hadn’t seen it was taking nothing at all. For a guide with lots of experience you would think he would know how to push and hold a button…

t be continued

My taxi driver warned me several times to be ready at 5am, he would be knocking on my door! I was up at 4.50, brushed my teeth, grabbed my gear and waited! typical, had he ran off with the deposit I had paid him or was he just useless? I called his number, nice waste of £2.40 to hear him say he would be there in 1 minute. Bleh! My mobile provider had also finally mailed me to say they wouldn’t unlock my phone as agreed theh day before I left as it was second hand. C**nts! He showed up and off went down some very poor roads. Very slow and no chance for any extra sleep on this leg, there were potholes and rocks galore. 5 am was a pretty stupid time to leave since we were there a good hour before time, I got him to play me some African music on the way up and he didn’t seem to mind the same 6 songs repeating about 10 times. At least it wasn’t Michael Bolton!

I bought him some breakfast, it was about a quid each and we waited for the other 7 people to arrive. Eventually a Australian Couple, Darren and Amanda from Brisbane showed up with their driver. Dressed in nice new jungle gear too! :p They took a lot of holidays too since they both owned their own businesses, and were usually independant travellers but this time they had opted for a tour. Fair enough, not many backpackers would be splurging £200 on an hour with some gorillas anyway! However I got the impression this wouldn’t be the kind of trip my mother would find easy, and the group we would be visiting were the newest and potentially most challenging to get to. The other 5 people never showed up and after a quick pep talk hired a couple of porters to carry our stuff and drove about 4km to the path. I guess I could have asked for my $25 park entrance fee back as I never actually went into the park because the gorillas had recently moved just out of it. They weren’t sure why, possibly because of competition with another nearby group but they were still pretty close.

We began the hike down the rather steep trail to the bottom of the valley passing through fields and past a few houses along the way. The gorillas are all guarded to protect them from bush meat poachers, and also keep them away from the locals who, as you can imagine, woud rather not have to deal with huge 200 pound apes eating their bananas and terrorising them all the time. We were also protected by a couple of guards carrying AK-47s, which was reassuring since we were only a few kilometers from the Congo, and a few years ago several tourists were killed in the same park by Congolese guerillas. Lots of dangerous types then! With straining knees we reached the steam on the valley floor in about half an hour or so, crossed over and walked for another 10 minutes to where the rest of the guards and guides were waiting. We could see their camp nearby and passed through a few old gorilla nests where they slept before. They were waing in a recently slashed and burned area on the hill side and we dropped our coats, staffs and non essential items, got hydrated and went gorilla hunting!

Well, it didn’t take long, about 30 seconds and there was a gorilla sitting next to the clearing munching away on leaves! He didn’t seem at all bothered by us, quite happy to sit and eat, posing for photos. Darren had a nice digital SLR with a good zoom, and I reckon he got some great shots. I blasted away on my little canon. 2 minutes of playing model was enough and he rolled into the bush in search of better food and less attention. We crossed over a rather tiny plank over a small gully into the uncleared jungle and found another gorilla under a bush also eating. I guess thats what they do best :p We got pretty close, about 3 meters and the guide hacked us a better path so we could see him better. There were other babies in the tree that we could also see, not too clearly but making a lot of movement. We moved back down the valley in search of the boss. We saw him briefly along with a baby, but he disappeared quite quickly and we carried on to the stream below. It was great fun, the jungle is no barrier if you’ve got a big machette and dont mind getting dirty. We were slipping down near vertical slopes and pulling ourselves through thick bush, sploshing in bogs and trying to avoid big holes as we clambered over big fallen trees. There was another gorilla up the other side over the river and we could see the bushes move as he pulled leaves from the branches but we couldn’t see him. It was ‘too steep’ to get up and have a look, but it wasn’t that bad. We set off back the way we came looking for the dominant silverback we lost just earlier. The babies were still swinging away, but you couldn’t get a good photograph.

We hacked a new path and found a way to the boss, Nkuringo, you could just see him through the trees. Our guide from the office, the little guy with the machette and Darren up in front about 5 meters away from us while I was gallantly helping Amanda through the brush when there was a mighty roar and Nkuringo stood up and confronted the 3 guys in front! I was glad I wasn’t in front as a fully grown male gorilla showing his teeth and lungs to you is probably not the most pleasant experience! Darren aparently got quite a shock (but no photos :{). The video was going and although I didn’t capture it I certainly got the sound! The guides were not too bothered though and just roared back at him, I guess they knew not to take any shit :p After we changed our underwear we sneaked up a bit more and found him happily eating away again in the clearing and you could see more movement in a nearby bush. We snapped away as the hour was nearly up and boy had it gone fast! We edged closer and Nkuringos son came out and started to play in front of us! Tiny little fella was rolling around and beating his cheat just a few feet away with his father watching patiently in the bush nearby. Cool!

We snapped away like mad until Amanda and my memory card ran out. Thank goodness for the video, which was better in the low light anyway. I had stupidly forgotten my tripod. At least I had spare batteries though! Eventually we had to go and left them in peace. Those gorillas are raking it in at £200 an hour, but what a great job! :p We hiked back up the hill, and I regretted hiring a porter but they made out it was miles and really difficult, which it wasn’t. Still Amanda had a hard time of it and they both had quite a trek to go as they had optioned a 2 hour walk through the NP rather than drive 5 hours around it. I was kicking myself for not being prepared for a lift north as they were heading my way. I had thought it possible but with my stuff everywhere and laundry being done it was not possible. Oh well. We got to the top and I went with them to the start of the trail in their 4WD, sending my taxi driver back to the office to wait for me. We had swapped emails and I promised to send them a DVD of the gorillas in exchange for their photos. Which is good because I suspect my photos were rubbish! They set off with their armed guards and since i haven’t heard about any tourists being kidnapped assume they arrived safe and well.

The cheeky s.o.b. of a taxi driver had accepted my suggestion I buy him lunch to the tune of 7,500 schilling, and told me there was nothing left to eat. I can believe it, the lying git would have cleared them out *if* he had eaten anything. It was impossible to spend 7,500 on lunch so my intention of tipping him went right out the window. Pity, I intended to give him more than he swindled out of me, pity for him anyway. And he cost me about 9,000 since i rang him when he was late! And he sealed his fate when we arrived back at the hotel and I struggled my bags, coat, sandals and various stuff off the back seat while he just sat there. When I managed to get it all in my hands he offered to help, nice one, goodbye….muppet! Back at the hotel, after i got over my heart attack over how much they had charged me for doing a few items of laundry I was soon tracked down by Joseph and we hammered out a deal for the following day. Local pygmy village, climb up a old volcano and off to see the fish otters in the nearby lake. We’d have a motorbike, I could drive if I wanted to.