Ever wonder what it would be like to be literally “off the grid” in Africa? We spent 10 days in Uganda, including three days in the southwest of the country visiting the Mountain Gorillas. Because of the tall mountains in the area, our phone stopped working. Even when it was working, a call back to the States cost $4.99 per minute! The video above is an overview - it shows just the highlights. We have posted five additional episodes below. The last few require registration.

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Episode 1 is a video of our visit to Ngamba Island. It is located on an island in Lake Victoria. It was a 45 minute speed boat ride on choppy waters to get there from Entebbe.

Episode 2 is a video of our visit to Queen Elizabeth National Park.

Episode 3 covers our trip to Ishasha Bush Camp.

Episode 4 includes the highlights of our visit to see the Mountain Gorillas in Southern Uganda.

Episode 5 covers our visit to Mburo Lake National Park.

25 - 27 June 2008

After spending two days in London and then taking a short flight to Brussels, we left early on Wednesday morning (25 June) to fly to Africa. During our eight hour flight we were treated to views of Tripoli, Libya and the Sahara Desert from outside the plane. We made a stop in Bujumbura, Burundi as it was just getting dark. The plane then continued another hour north to Entebbe, Uganda, the site of the only international airport in the country. It is located on the shores of Lake Victoria about 20 miles from the capital city of Kampala. After clearing customs we met our guide and were then taken to our hotel for the night in the Toyota Land Cruiser that would be our transportation for the entire journey around the country.

On Thursday we took part in a half-day trip to a chimp sanctuary on Ngamba Island. We crossed the equator on the 15 mile speed boat trip. Once on the island, we were able to view the feeding of about 40 orphaned chimps from Uganda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Most of the small island is open to the chimps to roam in the wild but since the size of the island does not provide enough food to sustain the population, supplemental feedings must take place. Observing the chimps during feeding was very interesting. After relaxing in the hotel and acclimating to Africa time, we enjoyed a nice dinner outdoors in the hotel.

Friday was spent exploring Entebbe itself. We walked from the hotel to a botanical garden, located right on the shores of Lake Victoria. Established in 1902, it consists of 100 acres. We hired a local guide to show us the beautiful plants and trees and we also saw a variety of birds and monkeys. After our visit we walked to the center of town to exchange some money and have goat and chips lunch at a local pub. Dinner was at the hotel with a special outdoor buffet and live entertainment.

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28 - 29 June 2008

Queen Elizabeth National Park is Uganda’s most popular savanna reserve. Within the park are Lakes Edward and George, connected by Kazinga Channel. There is an abundance of wildlife present, with over 90 different mammals and 600 unique bird species recorded. We spent two nights in the park, one at a lodge and the other at a wilderness camp on the river.

We left Entebbe early on Saturday morning (28 June) and drove about seven hours to the town of Mbarara, where we stopped for lunch. On the way we made a brief stop at the equator. The line went right across our highway! We continued on for another three hours before entering Queen Elizabeth National Park. It was market day in many of the towns that we passed. All of the roads were paved (albeit with many potholes) on the way to the park but all the roads in the park were dirt. As we got closer to the park, the elevation increased and we found ourselves driving through the tea fields of highland country. We dropped down from there into an arm of the Rift Valley to enter the park.

We dropped our bags at the lodge in the late afternoon and went straight to the jetty for a two-hour dusk cruise on the Kazinga Channel. We saw many animals during our trip, including hippos, elephants, buffalos, and crocodiles, plus many birds, such as fish eagles, storks, pelicans, herons, ducks, swollows and kingfishers. Some villagers were also getting ready for their nightly fishing in the lake. After the cruise we had a delicious buffet dinner and stayed in a room overlooking the channel.

On Sunday we woke to a hippo grazing right outside our room. After enjoying a great breakfast at the lodge restaurant overlooking one of the lakes, we traveled three hours down a 43-mile dusty road to the Ishasha portion of the park. We had to change a tire along the way in the noon heat. We stopped for a picnic lunch and then took an afternoon game drive through a classic African savanna. Unfortunately we were not able to see the famous tree climbing lions in the area. Our guide believed that oil exploration inside the park was disturbing their routine. After a full day, we reached our tent camp, along the banks of the Ntungwe River. Our tent had a river view with running water, a chemical toilet, solar-powered lights and a shower. There were separate lounge and dining tents along the river and we enjoyed an excellent four-course meal sitting at a table next to the water.

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30 June - 2 July 2008

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park is home to half of the 700+ surviving mountain gorillas in the world. An endangered species, mountain gorillas can only be found in three places: Parc National Des Volcans in Rwanda, Park National Des Virungas in the Democratic Republic of Congo and here. To see the gorillas, one must reserve permits far in advance. There are three family groups of gorillas that can be reserved each day and, with only eight people assigned to each, which equates to 24 permits that are available each day.

We arrived in Buhoma (the town adjacent to the park) late in the afternoon on Monday (30 June). We drove through several small towns on our way from Queen Elizabeth National Park. Our lodge consisted of a series of rooms nestled in the hills. Our room was the highest one, with about 65 steps to climb. We had a nice dinner at the lodge that evening.

On Tuesday we assembled at the national park visitor center at 8am to receive a briefing before the mountain gorilla trekking began. We were assigned to the M group of gorillas and we paid to hire two local porters to carry our day packs as support to the community. We left at about 9am and spent the first hour hiking up a mountain at a steep angle. Once on top we continued on and then entered the national park. Our guides were in frequent contact with the trackers who had left at 7am to find the gorillas based on their position from the night before. About three hours into the trek, we had word where the gorillas were so we proceeded to that area, left most of our equipment with the porters and then made our way with just a couple of the guides and the other six people in our group.

We were able to see most of the M group family: females, juveniles and just a glimpse of the male. The foliage was thick so the guide had to continually cut away a path with machetes. We tried to maintain the regulated seven meter distance but a couple of times the gorillas came closer. After the mandated one hour viewing period limit had passed we left the gorillas and continued to an overlook point for lunch. We then hiked down through the village and back to our starting point. The rest of the day was spent relaxing and shopping for crafts in the village.

Wednesday (2 July) was a second day of gorilla trekking that we had reserved to ensure that we saw them since we had come all this way to Uganda. This time we were assigned to the R group. We had a much easier time reaching this family as they were in a buffer area farm which was only a short distance from our starting point. Since they were not in the forest, we had much better lighting and views of the family and saw females, juveniles, babies and even the silverback male up-close. It was truly an amazing sight!

Because our hike was so short we had some time later in the day to hire a guide to take us on a three hour hike to a series of waterfalls. We were also accompanied by two armed guards for safety reasons within the park. We saw three waterfalls in all with the last one being 90 feet high.

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3 July 2008

Lake Mburo National Park is one of Uganda’s smallest parks but has a great lake setting and large populations of impala, zebra and buffalo. It took us all day on Thursday (3 July) to drive there from Bwindi, via a series of dirt and poorly paved roads. We broke down again with a flat tire just as we were entering the park in the afternoon, which also delayed us slightly.

Once we reached the park, we took a short game drive on our way to meeting an armed park ranger for a private bush walk as dusk was falling. We spent about two hours with the guide, making our way from the meeting point to our bush camp, and seeing a variety of birds and mammals. We were happy to have our long video and camera lenses and the animals were hard to capture up-close. It was definitely a unique experience!

Our tent at the bush camp was similar to the accommodations at Queen Elizabeth and very comfortable. We enjoyed our ‘on request’ hot shower (one orders a five gallon hot bucket of water to be poured into a container above the shower) and another delicious four-course meal.

We had one last game drive on Friday (4 July) morning before heading back towards Entebbe. The drive back took most of the day and we arrived back in the late afternoon. We then made our way to the airport for an overnight flight to Brussels, with a stop in Nairobi to take on more passengers. Once in Brussels we had a several hour layover before continuing on to Chicago and then to Los Angeles, arriving in the late afternoon on Saturday (5 July).

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Performers on the Cape Peninsula

6 - 9 October 2003

After an all-night flight from London, we first arrived in Johannesburg and then took a short flight to Cape Town. We spent one entire day touring the Cape Peninsula, seeing penguins and visiting the Cape of Good Hope. It is the most south-western point of Africa. We also visited Table Mountain, which overlooks the city, and the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront. From there we took a sunset cruise on a sailing ship.

To watch an overview of our time in Africa, click Africa Video.

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10 - 14 October 2003

We reached Windhoek, Namibia, the capital city, via a 21 hour bus ride from Cape Town. Our major activity in Namibia was a four day visit to Etosha National Park, in the northern part of the country. We rented a 4×4 truck with a shell and stayed at lodges inside the park. We were able to self drive around the park from sunrise to sunset and visit various natural and man made watering holes to observe many different kinds of animals.

To watch an overview of our time in Africa, click Africa Video.

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Music played by our driver as we drove from Windhoek to Audi Camp:

15 - 22 October 2003

We were driven about 800 kilometers from Windhoek, Namibia, through the Kalahari Desert, to a place called Audi Camp, just outside of the Okavango Delta and Chobe National Park. After a mokoro boat day trip down the delta, we joined a five day camping safari through the Moremi Reserve and Chobe National Park. Here we saw a wide variety of animals. Our last night in Botswana was spent at a resort in the town of Kasane.

To watch an overview of our time in Africa, click Africa Video.

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23 - 28 October 2003

To get to Zambia, we crossed the Zambezi River by public ferry and walked across the border. After securing transportation to Livingstone, we spent two days there seeing Victoria Falls, visiting a village and a museum. We took a bus to Lusaka, the capital city, on Sunday (26 October). We then made our way, via another bus, north to catch a 40 hour train from Kapiri Mposhi, Zambia to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, spending two nights in our train compartment.

To watch an overview of our time in Africa, click Africa Video.

The train moving along the tracks from Zambia to Tanzania:

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The dance troupe on the beach in Zanzibar:

29 October - 3 November 2003

After two days on the train from Kapiri Mposhi, Zambia to Tanzania, we finally arrived in Dar Es Salaam. We splurged and stayed one night in a very nice Holiday Inn. The next day we took a 2 1/2 hour ferry trip to Zanzibar, where we spent the next three nights. We enjoyed our bungalow on the beach and spending time in Stone Town walking around the narrow alleyways and famous doors. We also sailed on a dhow at sunset and watched a dance troupe on the beach as we ate dinner, with the kids being asked to join in the fun. It was a fitting end to our time in Africa.

To watch an overview of our time in Africa, click Africa Video.

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