Chimps hate me no more

Hi all, I'm writing this post from Kampala, the capital of Uganda. I haven't been in Kampala more than a few hours, so I have nothing to write about the city as of yet, but I did have a nice last few days in western Uganda and I finally saw some chimpanzees.

After coming back to Fort Portal from Queen Elizabeth park I went just a few kilometers south of Fort Portal to an area known as the Kasenda crater lakes area. There are several dozen small crater lakes formed during the whole western rift valley geological upheavel madness that created pretty much everything else I've seen on this trip since Lake Malawi. I stayed at a nice reserve overlooking one of the lakes, and from there I did a few days hikes. I went to some nice waterfalls, walked through banana plantations, saw lots and lots of lakes, and walked a ton. In the three days I was in this area I probably walked no less than 20k a day. In general, ever since arriving in Uganda I've been walking an enormous amount, and I'm in very good shape now because of it. However, I'm a bit tired, and I'm going to do very little physical activity, comparitively, over the next few days in Kampala and the region. Y'all can see the pictures of the region in the albums, which are currently uploading and should be done shortly.

The lakes area is right next to another national park, called Kibale forest, that has chimpanzees. After having failed on three attempts to see them I decided to give it one last chance. So yesterday morning very early I got to the park and went out, not optimistically, trying to see these damned animals. Well I did see them, and I saw a ton of them. The guide said we saw more chimps than anything other group he's taken out in the last several months. He estimates we saw around 40-50, and we were chasing after them too. First, we heard them as they were screaming to eachother about locations of food, supposedly. After following the screams for half an hour we finally came across the group. We found the dominant male of the group, which is why we saw so many, because he travels with an entourage. They were moving all over the place, so over the next two hours we almost ran trying to stay with them. They stopped at times to do nothing, or climb trees to eat fruits or do nothing up in the trees, but mostly they moved. So it was very tiring, but well, well worth it and I can say I finally saw a chimp in the wild.

Almost as memorable as seeing chimps and hiking through beautiful areas full of lakes and waterfalls, was watching the Euro 2008 games in the nearby town to the lake reserve where I was staying. The town, called Rwaihamba, has market days on Monday and Thursday. Por lo tanto, the people of this village must be a lost tribe of Israel and still have the tradition of market days on those specific days due to the reading of the Torah. I found no proof of this while I was there, but I'm probably right. Anyways, there is a liquor made from fermented banana juice here in Uganda and its vile. The alcohol percentage is upwards of 75-80% and its just awful. The folks watching the game were drinking lots of it and they were absolutely out of control. Really, really drunk folks, and while it was lots of fun to watch with them, I feel for their families after the game when they went home. I had a shot, but it's so vile you can't have more than that.

So I'm in Kampala now, and I'll be here until Wednesday when I go northwest to Murchison Falls National Park. The park lies on the northern edge of Lake Albert, which is the northern end of the Western Rift Valley. The Western Rift Valley goes from Lake Albert to Lake Malawi, and I have done all of it except this section, so it will be quite cool to get there. The park is named after some apparently impressive falls, where the Nile goes through a tight gorge. The falls are the main attraction, along with the lake, but there's lots of animals too in the area. I'm going on an organized trip, the first time I'll be doing that, but there's a hostel in Kampala that does it cheaper than you could on your own. So I'll be there for three days with seven other people, and it should be a really nice time.

In the meantime I'm just going to do some errand type stuff and see Kampala over the next few days. Tomorrow is a world cup qualifier between Uganda and Angola, so I'll definitily go to that too. Angola is a much better team than Uganda, so I'm not sure it will be the best atmosphere, as Angola should win, but who knows. I might go to Entebbe too for a day. Well that's all for this post. I'll probably write again after Murchison Falls in a week from now. Picture links will go up shortly for everything since Burundi until now, and the map is updated too.

ate mais, B