Yes, I missed a couple of days. We left early Friday morning for Lake Bunyonyi, said to be one of the nicest lakes in Uganda. It is 8 kilometers outside of Kibale, not far from the border with Rwanda and Congo Zaire. Kabale is a staging area for trips into Rwanda to see the mountain gorillas and several of the people we met had just returned. More on that later.
The ride from Kalinzu should be 150 km and take about three hours, but we made the mistake of going through Bushenyi on the road to Mbarara instead of turning off at Ishaka. It must be the lure of pavement vs. dirt roads. When we realized our mistake that simplest correction was the hypotenuse of a triangle back to the real dirt road. Unfortunately this hypotenuse was a rutted bumpy dirt track but we had no schedule to keep and made the best of it.
Kabale isn’t nearly as congested as Kampala but after the solitude of the first 200 kilometers, it was white knuckle time, not because of cars, but bicycles. This is how I picture Beijing. We stopped at the Highland Hotel to book our accommodations at the Overland Resort. We wanted a safari tent for but had to get a cottage for the first night because there were 240 United Nations folks gathered for a conference. The good news is we had our own shower and a sit-down toilet. The Overland claims the best toilets in Uganda which is probably true, but Uganda hasn’t set the bar very high, loo-wise.
The resort is a hang loose place right on the lake about eight rough kilometers from town. The main activity is going out in dugout canoes with a guide to paddle you around. A free-lancer, Jackson, booked us for Saturday morning so we searched for birds and read when the storms came through. While we were sitting outside our cottage, Roni, an independent traveler from Israel stopped by. When she learned we were with JGI we had to tell her everything. Roni is the exception to Stephanie’s description of the typical 20-something volunteer. She is 23 and female but very much capable of functioning alone. After her military service she spent two years with a program to help families establish themselves and colonize the Negev Desert, living in the desert, herding goats and making cheese.
Saturday morning we went out with Jackson and discovered several new birds and got a good look at some old favorites. The terraced hillsides are beautiful from the water. As we were nearing shore Jackson put the bite on us to “sponsor” his daughter for secondary school. He must be used to dealing with tourists and well-paid NGO workers and he was surprised when we explained our situation; that we are here at our own expense to help make his country better, and that we are unpaid and live very much like he does with no electricity or running water. When I suggested maybe he should give us money he said, “I would if I had it.” I felt bad about that.
We moved into our spacious 10x14 safari tent which sits like a tree-house on a stilt platform on the hillside over the lake. It is sheltered by a roof and has a veranda and was nice and cozy during the several hours of heavy thunder storms. It was quiet without the UN guys there and we talked with Bill and Jan from Adelaide. Their group had just returned from seeing the Rwanda gorillas and everyone had good things to say about the experiences. But no one called it “the trip of a lifetime” or said “you gotta do this”. It costs $275 per person, plus visas, transportation and lodging. The hike can take up to three hours and you spend one hour in the company of the habituated group of apes. Their location is radioed in by a National Park staffer who follows them around. We know there are only 600 mountain gorillas left in the wild and we will most likely not be here again. But the experience is almost artificial and $700 is a lot of money which is logistically difficult for us to get, so we are leaning toward skipping it. We shall see.
We had more beer, more bourbon and crayfish and rice, Mexican style, with salad for dinner. We looked forward to a nice sleep but the storms impacted it. Still it was a cool, comfortable night. We got another early start and avoided wrong turns and we were back home in time for lunch. We stopped at a market in the mountains and bought cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, and peppers to get us through the next couple of days. 