This chimp was spotted just off the main highway in the Kalinzu Forest. it was a young male, called "Son of Kahala" and part of a 52 strong habituated chimpanzee group in this forest.

Alison had never been to Uganda and for Geoff, it was 53 years since he and his family left Entebbe on a paddle steamer across Lake Victoria, heading for the Kenyan lakeside town of Kisumu and then to Mombasa on the coast.

What would it be like after all that time? Perhaps coincidentally we arrived at Entebbe from Johannesburg on a sunny morning, the international airport located right on the shore of the huge East Afican lake, Africa's largest. Entebbe and other Ugandan cities we were to discover had grown enormously since Geoff was living here. Uganda's population has grown at least 4 times over since the early 1970s and it shows in the crowded streets of Entebbe and Kampala through to the villages on the verdant, rolling hillsides as far as the eye can see.

We hired a tougher vehicle in Entebbe from a local dealer to deal with the rougher roads and it proved a good choice. We planned a circuitous trip first west from Kampala towards the Ruwenzori Mountains on the Congo border and the tea plantations of Fort Portal. We stopped off at a small crater reserve, Nkuruba, one of many explosion craters close to the Western Rift Valley volcanic zone before descending to Uganda's second largest national park, Queen Elizabeth, and one that Geoff knew well from spending 2 months here before he went to University in Britain.

Uganda has had a fairly tumultuous time politically since it became independent. Instability through the rules of Idi Amin and Milton Obote was later compounded by refugee chaos from across the border in Rwanda during the genocide period there and the even more politically unstable Congo. The last decade has been relatively peaceful and we felt genuinely safe everywhere we went in Uganda.

The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) has done a lot of good work on primate conservation and a lot of the not very many tourists we saw in Uganda were focused on seeing chimpanzees, gorillas and other unique primates. We passed on the gorilla possibilities (too expensive for our stretched budget), but we did spend a memorable morning in Kalinzu Forest, a large primary rainforest reserve that is joined to the even larger Maramagambo Forest in Queen Elizabeth national park. Following protocols elsewhere in Africa where there are still great ape populations (Tanzania, Rwanda, the Congo and Gabon), small family groups of both gorillas and chimps have been carefully habituated and visitors under controlled conditions are now allowed to get a close up experience. The chimps and gorillas are often as curious as the humans in these encounters, although the possibility of an encounter is not guaranteed, as the families of apes wander around according to fruiting trees (chimps) or ground level vegetation (gorillas). The Kalinzu forest chimp population is estimated to be around 500, with 52 in one extended family group habituated. The Kibale Forest National park chimp population is a lot larger at around 3,000, while gorilla populations are at the moment holding on relatively healthily in the Impenetrable Forest and the three volcanos on or near the Rwandan and Congolese borders. In addition to chimps, we saw red and black and white colobus monkeys, L'Hoest's monkeys, red tailed monkeys, vervets and baboons.

Queen Elizabeth NP had suffered greatly in the past, especially when the attempt to kick Idi Amin out was in full force, with Tanzanian and rebel Ugandan troops using the park as a base for a while. The park seems to have recovered with good populations of all the usual megafauna. Elephant herds and lone males were seen everywhere, even holding up the traffic on the main highway that runs through the park. The Kazinga Channel that links Lakes George and Edward in Queen Elizabeth was brimming with birds, hippos and crocodiles as well as attendant antelopes and warthogs.

The last reserve we visited didn't exist when Geoff lived there - Lake Mburo National Park is a relatively small park in the savannah lands of the Ankole cattle herders. It's become a popular place for bikers and hikers as there are no really dangerous animals (lions have apparently recently wandered over from Rwanda, but are rare or non-existent most of the time). It must be quite a magical experience to walk or cycle (with an armed guard of course) close to the herds of zebras, waterbuck and giraffes.

Geoff tried to find the grave of his Mum who died in Kampala in 1970. The graveyard has narrowly escaped development and upheaval and is a rare green oasis in an ocean of rapidly expanding urban development. Sadly, the actual gravestone couldn't be found. Whether it had actually been put in place back in 1970 will never be discovered.



Sample of birds we encountered in Uganda.

Top row: African Fish Eagles, Bee eaters,
Middle row: Turaco in the Nkuruba rainforest, Little Kingfisher at QENP.
Bottom row: Pied kingfishers along the Kazinga Channel, Crowned crane.


Top row: Black and white colobus monkeys
Middle row: Red colobus monkeys,
Bottom row: Chimpanzees in Kalinzu Forest.

Some of the 7 species of primates we saw in Uganda.



There was a huge diversity of other megafauna in Uganda.
Top row: elephant herd along the Kazinga Channel, zebras at Lake Mburo NP
Middle row: banded mongooses at Nkuruba, elephants feeding on papyrus,
Bottom row: bushbuck, hippos and little egret along the Kazinga Channel.



A snapshot of human Uganda.
Top row: Kampala roundabout, Kalinzu Forest staff
Middle row: Pineapples on the way to market along the Mbarara Kampala highway, tea plantations near Fort Portal.
Bottom row: Warning sign in the Kibale National Park on the main highway, Ankole cattle near Lake Mburo NP.