Gorillas in the Mist

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda is one of three places in the world where you can still see some of the 500 or so remaining mountain gorillas remaining in the wild. DR Congo and Rwanda are your other two options, although DR Congo is more or less off-limits at the moment.

The normal procedure is to organise a gorilla permit weeks or months in advance from the Ugandan Wildlife Service headquarters in the capital, Kampala. Dan and I never bothered with this. Instead, we just showed up at the gate of the national park and hoped that a permit would be available. As soon as word got around among the guides and campsite employees that we didn’t have a permit, we were approached about the possibility of seeing the gorillas ‘privately’. In other words, a corrupt Ugandan Wildlife Service guide would show us the gorillas privately and pocket the money himself. Considering the normal fee is US$500 per person, and nearly all of that goes to the government in Kampala and only a fraction to the local community, Dan and I did not immediately rule out this possibility. After some brief negotiations, though, we quickly realised that we were being played for fools. The web of corruption ran deep, and the only real winners would be the fatcats at the top. Fortunately there were legitimate permits available, so we each took one and did the whole thing above board. I’m glad we did because seeing the gorillas in the wild, just meters from us, was a wonderful and unforgettable experience.

The Jewel of Africa

Churchill called Uganda the Jewel of Africa, and I don’t think he was far off the mark. Although right on the equator, Uganda still manages to have a temperate climate, thanks to its high average altitude of around 1000m above sea level. Rivers and lakes are numerous, and the result is a lush, green and fertile countryside.

Bucolic Ugandan countryside looking West to the Rwenzoris

Shortly after arriving in Uganda, I ran into Dan again. We met in Jinja, the place where the Nile flows out of Lake Victoria and begins its long journey north to the Mediterranean. Jinja’s one of the best spots in the world to go white water rafting, so if you want to experience the rather exhilarating feeling of being flushed down a giant toilet, this is the place to go. Highly recommended.



Bujagali Falls -nothing compared to what came next

After Jinja, we headed north to Murchison Falls National Park. Things got off to a bad start here: I ate half of a grilled fish in darkness before realising too late that it was infested with maggots, and then I slipped over on some gravel and badly cut my chin. We also had no luck hitchhiking. We waited a whole afternoon but no ride materialised and we ended up spending a night camped outside the park gates.



Mmmm, nice cut

Fortunately, our luck changed for the better the next day. We bagged a ride into the park on the back of a truck, arriving just in time for the ferry to take us up to the base of the Murchison Falls. At this point, the Victoria Nile is forced through a 6 metre wide crack in a cliff, creating undoubtedly the most powerful, thunderous surge of water I’ve ever seen. We got off the boat and walked up beside the falls for a closer (and wetter) look. Apparently this used to be Idi Amin’s favourite spot for disposing of his political enemies. What a nice guy he must have been!



Cruising up the Victoria Nile



The falls from the bottom



The falls from the top

Nairobi Pitstop

My camera broke down while on safari in the Masai Mara, so I headed to Nairobi to buy a new one. In doing so, I unintentionally completed my Road to Nairobi a few weeks ahead of schedule. Nairobi is a pretty edgy place with no real ‘sights’, so I stayed only as long as necessary to get a new camera and organise my finances, then boarded a bus bound for Uganda. The plan: Travel in an anti-clockwise direction around Lake Victoria through Uganda and Tanzania, then return to Nairobi for my flight to Auckland, New Zealand on December 12.

Safari in the Masai Mara

I got my chance to do a safari while in Nakuru, Kenya’s fourth-largest city. After a bit of hard bargaining, a tour operator offered me a good price to join a tour to the Masai Mara game reserve. I saw a nice selection of animals, but missed out on rhinos, cheetahs and leopards. The wildebeest had already migrated south to the Serengeti and although there were quite a few stragglers left behind, I don’t think I saw the Masai Mara at its best. Even though it was low season, there were quite a few tourists cruising around the reserve in Hiaces and Jeeps. The pressure was on the guides to show their customers the ‘big five’, so if anything ‘special’ like a lion or elephant was spotted, there was always a mad rush. If anyone found a lion, for example, half a dozen vehicles would suddenly converge on him, ruining his peace and preventing him from hunting. On another occasion, I observed from a distance as a harassed elephant suddenly turned and charged the convoy of three vans that was following him. Seeing such things made me feel a bit uncomfortable. Surely not all safaris are like this?

Via the Vertical Bog to a Beautiful View

Mt Kenya is a 5199m giant, the highest mountain in Kenya. The mountain is crowned by several rocky summits, many of which can only be reached by technical climbers. However, Point Lenana at 4985m is a relatively easy climb and by far the most popular summit on the mountain. I decided to give it a crack.

After some initial problems finding a reliable local guide, I finally found a good one at the Mt Kenya Guides and Porters Safari Club. His name was John Mike, a nuggety guy at least 50 years old and one of the original founders of the club. Despite his age and gear that was almost as old as he was, he set a pretty smart pace. We spent the first night at 3000m. The highlight (actually a lowlight) of the second day was the so-called ‘vertical bog’, a miserable climb through endless mud and slime from which no pair of boots emerges unscathed. We finally reached Mackinder’s Camp at 4200m and there I pitched my tent. We were both in bed by 8 pm as we wanted to be on Pt Lenana for sunrise the following morning.



Me and the Boss

We set off still half-asleep and in darkness at 3.30 am, plodding with torches and small backpacks up a seemingly endless scree slope. I was wearing every item of clothing in my backpack, a total of 8 different layers, and was still frozen. Fortunately I didn’t feel the altitude too much. John Mike was suffering a bit though, and 150m below the summit, he had to stop. The horizon was already a spectrum of colour, with a few stars still visible up above – day was breaking. I was not about to stop this close to the summit, so I pushed on by myself, running on adrenaline. With every minute, it got lighter and the spectacular view revealed itself. With a final scramble over the rock and ice, I hauled myself up to the summit and immediately collapsed huffing and puffing. The sun crept over the horizon and started casting long shadows over the plains far below. I’d made it!



Just before sunrise



That's where I was

Moyale with Cheese

Actually there’s probably no cheese within 1000km of Moyale…I was just thinking of Jules’s line from Pulp Fiction :-)

Moyale, a grotty border town on the Ethiopia-Kenya border, is the start of a long, hard, tyre-destroying road south to Isiolo in the more populous Central Highlands. An occasional bus runs these days, but the only regular transport is by truck. I stocked up on bananas, biscuits and samosas, handed over 600 KSh (about US$9) and found myself a place up behind the cab. Most of the other travellers lay on the truck’s cargo (sacks of beans), which were under a tarpaulin to protect them from the rain. I fashioned a seat by criss-crossing some bits of rope between the steel bars that supported the tarpaulin and this became my spot for the rest of the journey.

Don't fall off!

One of the Ethiopians on the truck with me was particularly friendly and we became travelling buddies. His name was Antenah (easy for me to remember) and he was on his way south to Uganda to look for work. It was his second attempt. Three years ago, he’d tried to make it to South Africa but had been picked up in Zambia and thrown into prison for 6 months because his papers were not in order. Now he was having another crack. I admired his spirit!

A breakdown somewhere on this 600km journey is virtual certainty – the question is what will break and how often? For us, this time, it was the tyres. One hour after leaving Moyale, we got our first puncture. The tyre was swapped, but a few hours later there was a bang like a gunshot and we had a tyre blowout. That meant a longer delay as the first puncture had to be repaired and the wheels swapped again. We ended up spending a night in the town of Marsabit and set off again at dawn the next morning. As we descended Mt Marsabit in the grey light of early morning, I spotted several elephants grazing in the bushes by the side of the road. Sitting up behind the cab gave me a great view out across the acacia-covered savannah stretching unbroken all the way to horizon. Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia were all nice in their own way, but here for the first time I felt I was seeing the ‘real Africa’. Whatever that is! Anyway, we soon struck more problems as one of the wheel hubs cracked. There were further delays as the tyre was removed from the hub and the hub replaced with last remaining part of the spare. By this stage we had absolutely no spare kit left so we rode our luck for the next 7 hours to Isiolo. Fortunately, we made it without incident.

The real Africa?

We limped into Isiolo just before dusk on the second day, 40 long hours after setting off from Moyale. Asphalt roads, ATMs, bars and restaurants signalled a return to some sort of civilisation. This was my jumping-off point for Mt Kenya, so I left the truck and set about finding a bed for the night. It turned out to be pretty easy. In the half-darkness, I spotted a white face coming the other way and waved the guy over. In a nice bit of serendipity, he turned out to be a kiwi called Dan. He’d even studied for the same degree as me at the same university back in New Zealand. Dan offered me the spare bed in his room, and we spent the rest of the evening downing Tusker beers and discussing the options for climbing Mt Kenya – something he’d just done a few days ago. Perfect.

Roadtonairobi is Back (again...)

After a long delay, I'm in a position to post again. I know I suck sometimes. Loyal readers: Respect!