Ishasha to Kibale by Road

  Kibale, Uganda
Friday, June 13, 2008

Ishasha to Kibale by Road

Friday June 13th, 2008. Ishasha to Kibale by road
Up bright and early again to get on the road ASAP so we were finished with breakfast by about 6:45am and on the road by 7am. Overall I thought the Ishasha Tented Camp (run by Wild Frontiers) was very good. My only two gripes were that the meal portions for lunch and dinner were too small and the staff all had body odour. I was hungry most of the time I was there and while I could have ordered more food, I didn't need to order another meal, I just needed a bit more on the plate for each meal they served. As for the BO, I know deodorant is not normal with most people here but if you are serving people who are not used to it I would have thought it would be a good idea for the hotel to advise the staff on how to keep smelling fresh.
Oh yeah, the tents were all twin room and I would have preferred a double so I could have slept next to my wife. You could slide them together but there was a big timber rim between the two so that didn't fix anything really. That being said, we found this to be the case in the next two tented camps we stayed in so its obviously the norm. Maybe someone could break the norm and come up with a good twin/double solution that allows people to sleep with their partners whilst on their trip of a lifetime?
We had been told when we checked in to Ishasha that a bridge had been knocked out but were hoping it would be fixed by the time we left. No such luck. The notes from our travel agent were that today would be a 3-4hr drive.....not even close. It ended up almost 12hrs door to door again. My GPS told me we had done 65km in the first 3hrs but I am getting ahead of myself.
Maybe Friday the 13th was playing its usual tricks but the bridge we were supposed to use was out so we had to take a long detour although Martin assured us it was an interesting drive, albeit a long one. We started in the Ishasha park and it took us about 45mins to get out of the park as we drove slowly and stopped regularly looking for game. We didn't spot anything too exciting but its still always interesting to look for African wildlife.
After we left the park we sneered at the oil exploration guys that seemed to be multiplying and we arrived in Kinigi town to get some water for the next couple of days. Here we spotted all sorts of goings on and considering it was about 8am it was pretty busy. They have a specific type of hand made scooter in Kinigi that is more common here than anywhere else and they are always going to catch a second glance. They are used for transporting things but they still look like fun.
Out of Kinigi we headed along dirt roads up and down, round and around. At one point we came around a corner to see a deep valley open before us - the Rift Valley. It has many "starting" points so this was no specifically interesting part of the Rift Valley except that it was the first time we had seen it. The walls on this valley are extremely steep yet the locals still manage to farm here. When I say steep, I would struggle to stay standing if I had to stand in one of the fields they farm in.
Martin told us an interesting piece of local road law - if you hit livestock (cow, goat, etc) the one that was at fault pays the bill. So if the animal was at fault then the farmer pays the bill (but usually can't). The fault is determined by road signs that tell you livestock is on the road ahead but even when this sign is up, the farmer must have his animals under control - and they never do. So it is rare for a driver to have to pay a farmer if they kill their livestock - very different in Asia.
Somewhere along the way at a junction town, Martin stopped and got us some local BBQ corn on the cob and cassava to try out. The corn was excellent and the cob was about 12" long so plenty of food to go around. The cassava I found a little dull and dry. I thought it would be something like yam or sweet potato and it sort of is but without much flavour. Anyway it was good and cheap (about US$1 for the corn and the cassava combined) so morning tea for three for US$1! Not bad...
One thing with all this driving, you start to fell a little uncomfortable looking at everyone as you go by. I don't mean physically uncomfortable - I mean emotionally. The vast majority of the people you pass have nothing at all, and you are cruising by in your big 4WD with someone driving you around the place and you are looking at all these people with great interest - the interest is partly due to the massive gap in lifestyles we have. So many of them turn to see you coming or run from their house to the road and the look in their eyes is almost as if they were hoping you were the one who would lift them out of their poverty. I know it sounds a little high and mighty but I felt a little embarrassed to look at the people going past sometimes. And there are quite a few that don't like to be looked at and plenty that don't want to be photographed so be a little sensitive to the people you are photographing. I found kids loved it, teenagers and above were 50:50.
We stopped at about 1:30pm at a place called Kalinzu Forest Education Centre for lunch. This was a very small patch of forest being opened to tourists by the Ugandan National Forestry Authority and had a few walks right next to the highway (oh yeah - we were on tarmac for a while too which was a very nice change from the washed out dirt road).
A couple of hours later we got drove past a few villages and over a hill to find the huge expanse of the Great Rift Valley open up before us. It was a truly amazing site with rivers and villages and roads down in the valley below. Somewhere on the valley floor was our land crossing of the equator. I have crossed the equator many times and live only about 4km from it, but this was to be my first land crossing which was pretty cool. There is a little marker where the equator crosses the road so we stopped for the obligatory tourist photo with cheesy pose.
Next stop was Kasese in the rift valley and the start point for many Rwenzori Mountain treks. They were a little hard to see because of cloud cover but Martin assured us they were there. One day I would like to do the week long hike to the biggest peaks (around 5200m I think). One thing about Kasese - it has a Barclays bank with ATM and I managed to withdraw US$1,000 without a hitch. I finally had some local currency in my pocket.
It was about another hour and half to Kibale Forest Primate Lodge where once again we were too tired to take in too much especially as we arrived right on dusk. We were hungry, tired and dirty so all of those had to be fixed ASAP.
A tough day and one I again would have preferred to have broken into two days but I am not sure where we could have stopped for a night along the way.