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.




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