Fort Portal

Rwenzori foothills

I'm blaming my black lung on the Kampala smog, so this weekend I escaped the city and headed to the Fort Portal area in the foothills of the snow capped Rwenzori Mountains--the highest mountain range in Africa.

One of the crater lakes with Rwenzoris in the background

Our group of six hired a 4-wheel drive camper van which we creatively named Herbie and drove the 4.5 hours to Fort Portal. Like everything else in Uganda, it was more beautiful than my google image search showed.

We camped by one of the many crater lakes in a campsite overrun with monkeys. Please excuse all the monkey pics, they are my new favorite animal.

Yogi Monkey

That night as I walked to the toilets, I heard a deep guttural growl from the dark forest. My immediate irrational thought was tiger, but of course there are none in Africa...In any case I ran back to the tent.

On the sunroof

Saturday morning I woke around sunrise and sat by the lake. The lake was completely still, but there were bits of bamboo floating in it. Around 6:30am a man came to the shores and got in a boat, which was just bamboo roped together with a log for him to balance on. Then he went to the bamboos and pulled them up, bringing up nets with fish and crayfish stuck in it.

Our crater lake

I brought a book, but was completely entertained by watching the monkey’s daredevil antics. Also the book was “Guns, Germs and Steel.” As I sat there listening to the jungle sounds of monkeys crushing in the tree tops, birds, drums (maybe I was imagining that), all of a sudden that load, deep guttural sound came from deep in the jungle. A reply came from the trees behind me, and then another joined in across the lake. Lindsey and I debated nervously—frogs? birds? Suddenly a voice behind me said “monkeys” and I turned to see a man standing there laughing. Apparently the colobus monkeys make a racket. 

We fed the monkeys the scraps of pineapple from breakfast and, around 8am, roused the troops to leave. We headed to “the 3^rd largest village market in Uganda” where we were to meet Ramadan, a local who had led Lindsey around before. However, on the way there our trusty camper van started making scraping noises. We pulled into a gas station and were told it was broken underneath and would need a welder. This would take another 2 hours, so we entrusted it to the local car shop and got a local hire (taxi) to the market. 

Injured Herbie at the car shop

 Being the only Muzungus, Ramadan soon found us and organized some bodas to take us to the base of the hike. This was a hairy 30 min ride up the side of the mountains. I rode with my french friend our boda went first by about 15 mins so there was a while where we were sat in the base village with an unpaid boda driver and no money, water or food.

Base village

Base Village and Muzungus arriving on Bodas

A brief history of how we found this hike: friends of ours had googled “hot springs Uganda” but could only find some in national parks with fees. However, my roommate found a sentence about how a Buganda chief had to be carried to hotsprings once a year for the healing waters near present day fort portal. So, they headed of to fort portal and asked along the road until they were pointed in the general direction. Then, on the side of the road they found Ramadan, who knew exactly where it was and offered to take them.

Coffee

Casava

More villages on the way

 The hike was beautiful, up through the villages, but I found I was breathing twice as fast as normal. Ramadan was a wonderful guide, though he insisted he was our friend. He warded off the numerous village elders that greeted us at each village and asked for money. Since he was on the local council as the head of water supply, he quickly refuted their claims that we had to pay anything. He was also a great conversationalist. Our conversation varied from religion, water engineering, child sacrifice and of course, football. Ramadan was born a Muslim, converted to Christianity and then back to Islam again. When asked what he called God, he replied, “God is luck.” I’ve never heard that before. We also discussed child sacrifice, a sad fact in Uganda where it is estimated 100 children are sacrificed each year for wealth. He told me that when babies are born in the villages they leave them in the sun to turn black, I wondered if this is for jaundice but he said “no, they just only know black skin and don’t see white skin.” This was proven when at a spring, a child screamed at Lindsey, who is Chinese.

The river we bathed in with the Japanese Hospital (green) and snow capped peaks--can't really see the snow here

This bike pretty sums up Ugandan policy

 Did not know plenipotentiary was a word

On the way, we passed a hospital built by the Japanese, where, as always, we were asked to sign the visitors book. There were no doctors or nurses but we were told they are there during the week.

The hot springs were next to a river. There were many people there and lots of children, who scrambled to put on clothes when they saw us. Since we’d been hiking in the equatorial sun for the past 3 hours, the idea of sitting in a 100F pool did not appeal to us, so we opted instead for the brisk mountain river. The locals were very puzzled at this.

The hot springs were dammed pools with a mix of the hot spring water (very very hot) and the river water. The pools were at least 100F and the heat coming from the source was unbearable! There were rather large women dressed in clothes fancier than any of the villagers. Ramadan informed us theses were women from President Mouseveni's "pride" here to bathe in the healing waters. I asked how they got here (because it was a steep hike down to the river) and he said they were carried.

Extremely hot source

Hot spring pool

On the way back, I got out of breath and fell behind the others. There were many forks in the path and I relied on locals to point me in the right direction “other muzungos?” “aye aye muzungos (laughter at my wheezing).” At one point, a group of  children were less than completely honest, but I soon figured it out when I found myself in a village surrounded by giggling kids. A kind old woman took pitey and led me back to the proper path.

Brick ovens

Ramadan running to catch up after warding off a village elder

 After the nerve-racking downhill boda ride, we picked up Herbie (all welded together) and headed to the fancy lodge for a beer, because that is all we could afford there. Then back to camp for a bonfire, whisky (cures pneumonia I have decided) and guacamole.

View from the fancy lodge at sunset

 On Sunday the rest of the group headed off the track chimps at 4:45am. I didn’t accompany them (Mum)--something about yellow fever, but I woke up anyway...let’s just say I no longer have any amoebas in my GI tract (or anything else).  

Dawn over the forrest

Instead I swam in the lake and decided I wanted a better look at the Colobus monkeys, so followed a sign “Forrest Walk” in my flip flops and scrub pants. About 30 minutes later I glimpsed black fur in a branch and scrambled after what I was sure was a baby Colobus, or perhaps a bush baby. Finally I tracked the squirrel to it’s lair. A “Dwarf Scaly Tailed Squirrel” according to Wikipedia--Emily know how I feel about squrrels. Wet, muddy, hungry and cursing fluffy rodents, I went back to my tent where a family of Colobus monkeys were happily playing. Gits.

Colobus monkeys at the campsite with the lake in the background

Quote odd looking really

After breakfast, I walked an hour to the fancy lodge again. On the way, I passed the view of the 20K shilling note, which was voted the 3rd most beautiful currency in the world.   

Fancy Lodge with another crater lake

Boys selling tomatoes on my way

The 20K shilling view

I had planned on swimming in the pool but they wanted to charge 15K and were unimpressed by my friends-chimp-trekking-I-have-pneumonia-cough story. So I hung by the pool anyway and acquired a map. 

I met up with the others at the campsite for a last swim in the lake and amazing guac. Then we packed up camp and set off home, passing through the beautiful rolling hills of tea that we hadn’t seen in the dark on the way.

 We reached Kampala around 10pm, having come close to running out of gas on the way home and then accused the gas station of ripping us off because the tank took a while to show it had filled. All in all it was an amazingly trip and I want to go back to do more exploring of that area.

Please enjoy more pics of baby monkeys. 

Sippi Falls

Panoramic view of the lower falls

First of all, I apologize for the delayed post, we actually went to Sipi  two weeks ago. But then my PI from the US visited and I was very busy and then I was sick so did nothing last weekend. Turns out I have a touch of the pneumonia and amoebas... So I also apologize for this long rambling blog. Next adventure is Fort Portal (if my lungs comply).

View from our camp

Sipi falls is located in the foothills of Mt. Elgon, which straddles the border between Uganda and Kenya. It is a series of three large waterfalls, the biggest dropping 100m. Mt. Elgon is a volcano crater and used to be the tallest place in Africa until it erupted, putting kili on the map. It's now a measly 14,177 ft (4,321 m), which still puts all the ski resorts in the US to shame (at least so wiki tells me). Luckily Sipi Falls is only at 1,100m, which is lower than Kampala.

Sunset over the plains/lakes

We set off Friday after work. There were 9 in our  intrepid team (the fellowship of sipi), lead by our fearless half-Ugandan leopard-print snuggie-wearing (while hiking) leader. We were going to mutatu there (the taxi minibuses that drive like maniacs), but the morning before we left my Ugandan coworker informed me we would die this way, so we took a bus. The trip took around 5 hours, and wasn't bad for African standards. We arrived in the dark in Mbale and switched to a minibus  to climb up the escarpment. The moon was out, and so was the power (if it ever existed) and so we could actually see quite a bit. Our camp/hostel site was on the edge of a cliff, which I almost plummeted off in the dark that first night. However, we could see the falls in the moonlight, absolutely stunning.

Sunset over the plains of Uganda

The next day we woke, had a sad breakfast and even sadder coffee. Sipi falls grows Bugisu arabica coffee that only grows at an altitude of between 1,600-1,900m. It is meant to be excellent and is exported around the world, where it is very expensive. Being an addict, I was really looking forward to the coffee. However the stuff we were served was terrible, maybe we got the reject beans? We also ran out of time for a coffee tour. Clearly I must go back.

view of both the top and lower falls

Dangerously under-caffeinated and still hungry, we set out on our trek. Our guide got us some walking sticks "for balance." We started out along the road, where coffee beans were lying out in the sun. From the road in the blue morning haze the plains looked like an ocean. We did a steep climb through villages and coffee, maize and banana fields. We wheezed our way up while village boys ran along side us trying to make conversation. We did get an unofficial coffee tour: every single "arabica coffee" tree was pointed out to me. We also got to see the first step in millet-beer making. Called ajono. The entire process takes 3 days and is rather labor intensive. It seems the women make it, then the men drink it. Figures.

millet

 making millet beer

 As we approached the top falls, it started to get very wet from the mist. There were beautiful flowers  on the way. I of course fell and was covered in mud...By the end I was soaked and muddy.

Flowers by the top falls

The top falls

Our guides/entourage of village boys asked us if we wanted to see chameleons. They disappeared into the jungly undergrowth and returned with a male and a female chameleon. Backstory--when I was in Malawi, the two things I wanted to see most were elephants and chameleons. Well, I did see a chameleon but it was dead and regurgitated from a very poisonous snake, which itself was dead having been stoned by the villagers. I also did see elephants--they "escaped" the park and went marauding through a village and were being shot at (air shots). I decided the only thing I want to see in Uganda are mountain gorillas...let's see how that turns out.

male chameleon--thanks nick!

 We went on past avocado, mango, papaya, banana, onions and maize to a swimming pool in the river. I didn't swim because I felt I was coming down with something (many things), but from the various expletives it must have been freezing. We continued to the top of the second falls. 

river winding down from the middle falls

middle falls with banana plants

It didn't rain on us

Then on down through some jungle to more falls, these ones with a cave behind them. Our guide took a shower.

Then down some more for the final lower falls, the 100m drop ones. Now this bit was a bit hairy, there was a ladder of sorts to "help" us up/down the very steep hillside. The rungs bits of dodgy wood and very far apart, especially for my short legs. We went down facing forward, as instructed (I think for our guide's entertainment). The rails were not reliable. It was very steep. I'll put it this way, luckily none of us are scared of heights. Simon could not have done it.

at the top, before the really steep bit

lower falls

At this point in our journey, school boys were helping us. Basically dragging us up and down the hill. I tried to resist (training for kili here!) but it was hard. They managed to do in oversized flip flops what we could barely do in hiking books. We gave them some money "for water" at the end.

lower falls

We also passed thru nests of biting ants. Not fire ants (thank god), but nonetheless the buggers that you have to pull off you and often they leave their pincers in. On the way back up, I had one in my sports bra, it bit me twice while I was climbing the damned ladder. Almost died. 

whispering acacia tree

At the top we all rested, then back to the campsite. A few of us decided to hike to the other side of an outcrop to see the sunset. We set off up the road and in no time had a guide, who told us the best place. He pointed up to a hill where a man would help us see the sunset (?). We looked up and there was a tiny figure of a man waving his hands from the top of the steep outcrop. So up we went with another entourage (girls this time). The view was amazing, we could see the base of mount Elgon (the peak was shrouded in clouds), both the top and lower falls, and the plains with lakes that stretched on forever.  We forgot how fast the sun goes down on the equator and stumbled back to camp in the pitch dark for dinner (guacamole, beans and rice!) and stargazing. 

sunset (spot Julie and Lexie)

looking toward Mt. Elgon and Kenya

 I woke up early Sunday morning to catch the sunrise. The more fit in our group went for a run. It was only then, as I wandered around the village wondering why nobody was responding to my limited Luganda greetings that I remembered they speak a totally different language here (Lumasaaba). Wonderful. We all regrouped and got the 11am bus back to Kampala. I was exhausted!

maize

sunset