Veron’s Adventures

Mazungus in Uganda!

June 7th, 2010

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Trip report from a trip to the rainforests of equatorial Africa in search of the last wild mountain gorillas.

Ivar had arrived in South Africa and instead of giving junior some rest after 11 hours of flying southwards, we surprised him with a trip to Uganda the next morning, which meant another 11 hours of flying. It was going to be worth it. There was only one possible problem; two from the four of us didn’t manage to get the mandatory yellow fever shots in time. Following the letter of the rule this would imply no entrance to Uganda so we made sure we cashed out some extra US Dollars, the solution for everything in Africa…

We flew Cape Town -> JohannesBurg -> Nairobi (which looks much more like a free-market than an airport) -> Entebbe, where we spent the night in a hotel to prepare for the next day of road travelling from Kampala (the capital of Uganda) to the rainforests in the South-West.

It was a fascinating day with an overkill of impressions. People everywhere in Kampala, chickens and pigs crossing the roads, 2 lane roads used as 4 lane roads and lots of children screaming and waving at 3 gingers and a blonde guy in a Jeep driven by a local.

(click on photo to enlarge)

Mazungu, Mazungu! is what we heard all the time. Our guide told us it meant white person in Swahili. The Mazungu was a good person in Uganda, it never brought trouble and would always spend a lot of money.

The way the Ugandan people welcomed us was overwhelming. We had never seen so many smiling people waving at us in one day….

The scenery was geting more and more impressive as we left the paved roads and slowly passed the Ugandan mountains over the very bad unpaved roads…

a 4×4 is a must!

Ivar in the South-West which they call ”the Switzerland of Uganda”

We arrived late and tired at our destination, Bwindi National Park in Uganda right at the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, so we jumped in our tent to rest up for a day of trekking.

Our guard for the trip, just in case we would walk into some border-crossers coming from the DRC.

After about 45 minutes of hiking we found the gorilla family we were looking for. The minute we realised this the silverback (dominant male in the group, recognisable because of his gigantic size and ofcourse the silver hair colour on his back) jumped out of the bush, ran towards us and shouted to the guard. Having this monster at 5 metres distance in an aggressive mood was more than enough to get my heartrate to 200 in a matter of split-seconds. The idea that this animal can break anybody’s neck like a straw pumped more adrenaline into my body than any parasailing or heli-ski adventure ever will…

After 5 seconds or so the silverback just quietly returned to the group and the guide smilingly said; he just wanted to show us who’s boss… The boss sure as hell succeeded.

We had an hour of hang-out time with the gorillas. More time could lead to the transmission of human diseases as gorillas have about 97% of our DNA. It was an amazing hour. The baby gorillas were very curious and walked up to you to play with your feet. The gorillas were constantly on metres distance, curious but certainly not bothered by our presence. We just had to be a bit carefull to not touch the babies, or let them touch us. Mr silverback was watching everything closely, and we didn’t want to make the boss angry….

The man of the family.

I still have a hard time believing mountain gorillas get so huge while only eating plants and fruits. They gotta be the toughest vegetarians out there!

97% human DNA

The silverback was constantly watching over his 16 family members for the time we were there.

The boss with one of his 5 or so wifes.

a grown up female

More than 24 hours of travelling to get to the Ugandan rainforests, all to see the last mountain gorillas in the wild, for one hour. Trust me, it’s worth it!

The youngest ones were so cool we wanted to take one home Mountain gorillas do however not survive in captivity. All attempts to keep them in zoos failed within months.

There’s currently about 700 mountain gorillas left in the world, of which about 340 live in the Bwindi impenetrable rainforest in Uganda. Their official status is critically endangered, but there is hope.. as the population in bwindi is currently slowly increasing. Reason for this is that there’s no more gorilla poaching going on anymore in Uganda (Rwanda and DRC are a different story) and funded by tourism, Uganda is capable of protecting the gorillas using the military.

I can highly recommend travelling to Uganda and making such a trip. The country is safe and the local people are very friendly towards tourists (and white people in general, but thats pretty much the same)

On a different note; I am currently in Holland after 3 months in South Africa, where I had a great time and met lots of great people. I promise I’ll blog about South Africa, probably this month.

For now I’ll focus on triathlon. I’m going to race the olympic triathlon of Amsterdam this sunday, very much looking forward to it. Will keep you guys posted on how it goes.

Enjoy life,

Veron

Posted in Travel | 2 Comments »

South African Safari; Photoblog

March 31st, 2010

Cape Town, South Africa

(If you are using Mozilla Firefox as a browser, click on the pictures to get them scaled right!)

The North-Eastern part of South Africa is known for its wildlife with Kruger Park as possibly the most well known nature reserve in the world. John, Sven, my dad (who was visiting South Africa for two weeks) and me decided to go on a mid-week safari to Kruger Park and surrounding areas, and were lucky enough to see more wildlife than we were hoping for!

I will mostly stick to pictures, but feel like telling this one story that impressed all of us more than anything else on the trip…

The safari contained a 4 hour walk in the wild, which means you follow a heavily armed guide that takes you to a part of the bush with a high density of wildlife.

The rules were easy; You do as I say, you run for anything you die. (Imagine a 2 metres tall South African rugby playing guide armed with a 11mm rifle commanding you this to prepare you for all the fun to come!)

We walked after the guide (Bertus from now on) with a group of about 8 when we suddenly heard something big aproaching from the side and before we realized it we were looking in the eyes of an aggressive 25 year old male elephant, standing at about 8 metres from us.

Freeze, no Flashes no photos… Bertus commanded while pointing his loaded gun at the elephant.

So here are the (unflashed) pictures

It’s so insanely impressive to stand on your own feet while looking up to such a gigantic animal. The feeling is hard to explain.. but you feel small, very small..and full of adrenaline. Anyway, if you look closely to the elephant you see lines on both sides of his cheeks. Those lines are stress marks.

This bull was stressed out because it was breeding. Without realizing it we walked into a breeding hazard of about 15 elephants. As soon as Bertus noticed we backed out and continued the walk in a safer and more boring part of the reserve.

The encounter with this bull ended with the bull staring at us for about 30 seconds before turning his back to us; back to his harem!

The first day we did game drives in the Balule Reserve, a beautiful 2700 hectares park with open borders to Kruger.

Baby giraffe hanging out with the zebras.

The giraffe is the only animal where researchers discovered clear signs of long term homosexuality and total disregard of the other sex. just in case you were wondering…

We were very lucky to see two white Rhinos at about 10 metres distance!

This young rhino didn’t seem to care at all that a bunch of tourists where staring at him….

Talking about a pussy cat! The lodge we had lunch at the second day had tame leopards walking around…

The buffalo, member of the Big 5. Which is apparently a big thing in safari. How many of the big 5 did you see? was the question we got after each day. I mean elephants, rhinos, lions, buffalos and leopards are probably the nicest animals to see on an African safari but some people seemed to only care about telling their friends at home” they saw the BIG 5” (Americans obviously ;))

The cats were tough to find because the bush was still very vegetated as it was the end of summer. Best chances to see the big cats are in the winter (less vegetation) but we were once again lucky to see a group of lions from very close by!