Saturday, November 16th – Saturday, November 23rd
World Tour Days 14 – 21
We kicked off our next overland tour day with a 6 hour drive we made it to our campsite next to Lake Bunyonyi, Uganda where we spent the next 3 nights. Our first morning had a 4:30am wake up call for our Uganda highlight activity, gorilla trekking. We had to split up into two groups, one that could hike the typical 3-4 hours one way it takes through the jungle to get to the gorillas, and a group that due to age or medical reasons needed to hike to the gorilla family that was much easier to access. Nick and I were in the long hike group, which he was excited about after spending so much time on the truck not moving his legs. I had been sick the past week and was feeling a bit nervous about if I would be able to do the full thing, but feeling hopeful. Our long hike group of 8 drove 2 hours to the meeting point. We got our debriefing, and set off with our guide and 2 armed rangers.
Our theme of being extremely lucky this trip continued for our gorilla trek. The gorilla family the trackers had found for us were at the top of a mountain, but as we started our hike they made their way down closer to where we started. Instead of the 2 hour hike they had predicted it ended up being less than 30 minutes (much to Nick’s disappointment). The family we found had 15 members of which we saw 10. At any one point you could see around 7 of them, and hear the rest who were eating in the bushes. The forest was very thick but luckily the gorillas had been eating a lot and rolling around flattening the brush, allowing us very easy viewing. We spent one hour watching them eat. There was a huge silverback, 3 babies ranging from 1-3 years old, and a few females. The babies were all wrestling, practicing beating their chests, and snuggling with their mothers. We were allowed to watch them for one hour, then hiked back out of the jungle. The path was a relatively easy with some mud. It was pretty funny because the easy group ended up hiking for twice as long as us and on a very difficult trail where nearly every person slipped.
The next day a small group of us opted to visit the Little Angels Orphanage and school. It was a quick walk up a hill, overlooking a large portion of the lake. The lake and campsite were stunning. At the orphanage, we got to sit in on a math class, participate in the lesson, and introduce ourselves. The kids were so eager for us to sit next to them and wanted to hold our hands all the time. There was a lot of dancing between the lessons. We got to see where the kids slept, the library and their kitchen. We enjoyed a swim in the lake after the visit, and played lots of games in the afternoon.
Leaving Lake Bunyonyi, we drove to Lake Mburo National Park. This park had a ton of zebras and birds. There were also cows being herded by local people with very large horns. We took a stroll around the property we were camping at and had a very relaxing afternoon. The overland tour members all played pool in the evening. The campsite was very cozy, with a tree fort as the main building overlooking the horizon with mountains and forests as far as the eye can see.
The next several days we made our way back to Nairobi to switch trucks to continue our journey. Our truck had issues that needed fixing so we loaded up all of our camping supplies into a van and had them drive us back to our campsite outside of Jinja City. We had one day to relax, then more driving days back through Kenya first stopping at Eldoret, before finally making it back to Nairobi. We are looking forward to our next new country tomorrow.
