Queen Elizabeth & Chimp trekking in Kibale National Park; March 8th – 10th, 2019

Uganda is home to hundreds of chimps and gorillas. We wanted to seize our opportunity being here, so we decided to go on a chimp trek. (Gorilla trekking permits were extremely costly).

ALSO… there have been 5 other guests in the guest house since the middle of February. I’ll provide more info about this lovely crew later, but briefly they are medical students (one PA) here doing a rotation at the local hospital. Two of the five (Soubhi and Joe) joined Robin and I on our chimp trekking adventure.

We set out early Friday morning (around 9AM) for Kampala to meet our driver for the weekend, Livingston. We had some technical difficulties acquiring a car/ride for the weekend, but luckily one of the visiting doctors at the guesthouse was able to connect us to a driver.

We met with Livingston and began our travels. Before heading out, we went to eat at Cafe Javas, which is our favorite western food joint in all of Uganda. We ended up leaving Kampala around 12:30/1PM. From Kampala it should have taken around 8 hours to arrive at our first destination… however we experienced a few more difficulties along the way.

We stopped to use the restroom and when we went to leave, the car didn’t start. This was roughly 3 hours into our trip, so we still had quite a bit of driving to do. Luckily we were at a gas station and we were able to get a jump.

We continued along just fine, until dark. The headlights began flickering, so we pulled over on the side of the road at a tiny little village to check out the situation. Shortly after pulling over there was a herd of men surrounding the car looking under the hood. By the way, this was roughly 10PM. A mechanic came and determined that we needed to go back in town to review more and potentially get parts, maybe stay the night.. we were still 2 hours away from our lodging for the night. We went back into the closest town of Kizinda and stopped at a hotel. Soubhi, Robin, Joe and I went into the restaurant and grabbed some beer and snacks. While we were eating, Livingston came and told us we were ready to go. We continued on our way.

The lights began flickering shortly after, but we decided to pull over, turn the lights off and let the battery charge enough to keep the lights on for a while. We continued this process the entire way to the lodge.

We turned off the main road to the lodge, it was so dark (even with the headlights on) we couldn’t tell where we should go. Ultimately we ended up going the wrong way, down into a salt flat. We turned around, finally had service and were able to call the lodge to ask for more detailed directions. Finally, we found the town we were supposed to be in and saw signs for our lodge. As we drove around the lake, we saw pairs of eyes reflecting in the night; hippos were walking around!

We arrived at the lodge around 1AM. We were so excited to finally get to relax and sleep. Online, the lodge said the “tents” were for 2 people that included 2 single beds, 6 sq meters big. Turns out, it was a single hiking/camping tent, with a mattress on the ground, directly beside the lake. Not what we had planned, since we were anticipating more of a “glamping” situation, but whatever we were exhausted.

Sleeping that night was INTERESTING. There were so many animal sounds. Hippos were wandering around, which was terrifying. Soubhi had a warthog in this tents rain fly, the same warthog was sniffing around my tent (I just listened to it breathing hoping it wasn’t interested in joining me in my tent). Was not my favorite night of camping, but surprisingly was not my worst.

The next morning was very nice. We had a relaxing breakfast and enjoyed coffee beside the lake. We took a small boat ride around Lake George in Queen Elizabeth National Park. We saw several animals, including a ton of elephants. Despite the chaos of the day before, Saturday was off to a good start!

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After our boat ride, we headed back on the road toward Fort Portal. We stopped in the town of Kasese for lunch and continued on our way. We arrived at the hostel in the early evening and played cards, relaxed and had a few drinks.

The next morning we woke up early and headed into Kibale National Park for chimp trekking. The park was so beautiful; lush, green and dense. We had a little briefing session before our trek and learned some interesting facts. There are 10+ families of chimps in the park, however only 3 are accustomed to humans. One group is analyzed for scientific research and the other two families are for tourism/chimp trekking (therefore these chimps are less aggressive). Chimps share 98% of of DNA, so it was important that none of us were sick and that we stay a few meters away from each other to avoid transferring of diseases.

We began our trek. It was wonderful hiking through a forest again, it had been way too long. We walked for about 10 minutes and began to hear the chimps communicating. We continued for about another 20 minutes and began to pick up our speed. Our paths crossed the president of the family. We followed him as he walked along the path in front of us. Many other chimps came up to greet and pay their respect to him. It was really awesome to see this exchange.

He met up with a large group of chimps and they began communicating loudly. They were extremely vocal. I was not expecting them to be so loud. We watched as several chimps climbed up the tree for lunch while one of the oldest chimps sat on the ground in front of us, just relaxing. This guy, named Mr. Problem, is roughly 48 years old. His name stems from his bent wrist, which was broken when he was young.

We watched as they ate and cleaned each other. A little baby playfully jumped from branch to branch. We even witnessed a quick (7 seconds.. which is normal for chimps) of intercourse. Apparently when a female is in heat, she goes around to all of the males in the clan from highest importance/dominance down. When she gets to the least important chimps, they have to sneak away in fear of being attacked. Wasn’t expecting to learn that.. but hey! fun fact.

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Continuing on the interesting fact trend. Shortly after that experience, they began shouting loudly and descended from the tree tops. Almost in unison, when they were almost down, they began to go to the bathroom.. then continue on their way to the next grazing spot.

In order to communicate long distances and provide their locations, they smack a specific tree’s “buttress roots” (named for looking like flying buttresses, architecture reference) like a drum. It is loud and really cool to hear them communicate like that..

After hanging out a bit longer, it was time to conclude our trek. On the way back our guide showed us various trees. One tree is a medicinal tree used by the chimps and humans. This tree treats GI distress and bacterial infections. He also showed us a tree that has a specific fruit that elephants like to eat. However, this is a special tree because the elephants can’t actually digest this fruit so it ferments in their stomachs and makes them drunk. Drunk elephants are apparently angry drunks.. therefore guides carry AKs (with blanks) to shoot (in the sky) and scare the elephants.

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Shortly after, we arrived back at the car and for our journey back to Nakaseke. We decided to take a different way back, via Google Maps.. which was the wrong decision. FYI sometimes the roads on Google Maps don’t really exist or aren’t actually ‘roads’. Luckily this was only a 2 hour detour and we were back on the main road! Other than that, the ride back was uneventful. It was a very fun weekend!