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.