lakes and more volcanoes (lake bunyonyi and kisoro, uganda)

Here is the excerpt from the epic summer of volcanoes post:

Uganda

We landed in Kigali, Rwanda around midnight on July 7 and got off the plane to the smell of cooking fires in the dusky night. We were picked up by Adam’s old friend and our new tour guide, Emmanuel and his driver, Emmanuel. Both men went by Emma, which got a little confusing. We visited the genocide museum in Kigali the next morning before driving to Uganda, about three hours on winding roads past miles and miles of subsistence farms terraced up enormous hillsides.

In Uganda, we spent two days at Lake Bunyonyi, a beautiful quiet spot with terraced subsistence farms on every hillside and little kids being canoed to school each morning singing songs. We took the dugout canoes out for a spin one day, and Jim and I reminisced about our wonderful Boundary Waters trips. Canoeing isn’t that different wherever you go! (Jennifer wasn’t steering the boat!!  A tree trunk is different from a hulled-canoe in more ways than one.)

From the lake, we went on to Kisoro, a small town near the Rwandan border with three great volcanoes on its horizon, and a famous hotel in its center – the Traveller’s Rest, where Diane Fossey and other gorilla-studying pioneers came to stay during their explorations. We went gorilla tracking from Kisoro – mountain gorillas live in a few national parks in Uganda, Rwanda and the Congo, and some groups have been habituated by trackers, so you can pay for a license for a day and literally walk up amongst a group of gorillas and hang out with them (with a park ranger, a group of trackers, and 7 other tourists assigned to your group). It was a magical day that started with a long hike across fields and into a rainforest, up hills and through underbrush, until we suddenly popped out of a bush and a gorilla was sitting about ten feet away, looking around at the trackers who had led us there. We were flabbergasted. The brush made it tough to keep track of where all the gorillas were, but we stayed in their midst and watched one pop out, then another, and watched them climb trees and beat their chests and eat leaves and stand and look at us for an hour. We got lucky – we were assigned to find one family group, and they happened to be across a narrow ravine from another group. So not only we were close to about 10 gorillas, but we could turn around and watch another large group eat and climb and play as well. When we left the gorillas, we all agreed it had been a surreal experience.   You can watch some videos of the gorillas by following links to Jim’s youtube channel here: 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCINFOjy1tO2X7zfKMjNnazA

One aspect of gorilla watching that surprised us was the relative tranquility of the gorilla groups.  Despite two neighboring groups meeting, in relative competition with one another, there was absolutely no violence.  It struck me because of the anger I felt rising towards one of our human group members in particular, pushing to be in the front and not letting others have a turn, that humans are so much more violent then these creatures.  It was a reminder that humans are the most dangerous things in our lives, not gorillas, spiders, lions, or whatever other wildlife you could imagine.  This realization instigated a feeling of reverence for the gorillas that I had not felt before—huge vegetarians that live in relative peace despite some occasional male-male aggression that is almost never fatal.

The day after our gorilla trek, we climbed one of those big volcanoes, Mhuravura, at 4,127 meters high.  The trek begins at 2400 m, which equates to a climb of just under one vertical mile. Jim and I pushed through some tough steep climbing and a little altitude funkiness to reach the summit in about 5 hours, and spent three hours returning. Jim was struggling a little more than Jennifer with the altitude and steepness of the trail and at one point our guide Emmanuel felt compelled to ask, “Why is Jennifer stronger, Jim?  Does she work out more than you?” We enjoyed stepping across the border to Rwanda at the summit.  Although the top was cloudy when we reached it, we enjoyed seeing the variety of plant life at various altitudes, and got some beautiful views of the neighboring volcanoes on the descent. We also were followed by a large group of cute kids on our way back to the car, who shouted “Mzungu! Mzungu! Hi how are you! Give me money!” at us (most kids in Uganda did this – apparently there is a long tradition of white people – mzungu – throwing money out of car windows for children).

These are fields of tea--this was the most organized form of agriculture in the part of Uganda that we visited.  It was also the place where people seemed the poorest.  People were paid an infinitesimal amount to pick many kilos of tea--to the point that back-breaking work would accomplish something like $2 to $5 USD per day.  It seemed pretty bad for the people in the area that would otherwise use the land for small farms. 

The hills in Uganda and Rwanda were covered in farms--almost entirely subsistence agriculture.  Some goods would make it to market in the local towns, but none seemed designated for export (besides the tea from the tea plantations).

A new way of canoeing!  Check out Jennifer's low seat.  It was interesting to sit near the surface of the water.  Less leverage, but a very relaxed ride.  Think of driving in a low rider.

This is Adam and Lindsey paddling away.  When asked who was messing up the direction of the boat fingers pointed at the other person, ha ha ha.  Jennifer and I sounded about the same in the afternoon when the wind picked up.

BWCA???  Nope, Lake Bunyonyi in Uganda.  Crazy how similar it felt to be on the water in Uganda.  Minus the boats full of children singing on their way to school.

Another close encounter with the Davis's.  We stopped for an amazing lunch of fresh fruit, avocados, and fry bread under nearby under the trees.

A cool shot of the Davis's in their canoe.

The Petoskey ride.

Sunset on Lake Bunyonyi.

Jim had the ladies to himself while Adam was napping...

This approximation seemed excessive, but you never know.  We didn't swim due to the unadvertised parasites.

Our cute little campsite.

This is a rock quarry where men hammer away at the big rocks, then give the big rocks to women, who pound them with hammers into smaller rocks.  Then, the rocks are shoveled into trucks that transport the gravel/rock to a part of the road that needs repair.  It blew our minds to see people pounding away at rocks, some women had their little children on their backs as they were hammering the rock.

A far-away shot of the rock quarry.

This shot shows some of the piles of stone made by women.

A small town center--these were quite frequent and all contained a church and market.

Lake Bunyonyi from the ridgeline.

This is the hospital where Adam worked as an emergency room doctor for one month.  It sounded like an incredibly challenging and rewarding month.

This is the house where Adam stayed for his month in Kisoro, Uganda.

A typical market square in Kisoro, Uganda.  The motorcycles were everywhere and were the cheaper form of a taxi--you just hopped on the back and drove away.

More terraced farms--but these are on our walk to see the gorillas!

Yes, that is a white girl in the back left of the picture with extensions.  She was incredibly rude the whole trip despite being totally up for 'saving' the desperate locals.  Ugh, just need to vent about her horribleness.  She kept stepping in front of us and scaring the gorillas away--also taking pictures in the faces of local people as if they were a part of the scenery.

This is the sun rising on our way to the Biwindi Impenetrable National Forest.  Even though we were staying in the closest town to the park we needed to travel 1.5 hours over 20-25 km of insane dirt-mountain roads.  The roads had been dug out of the cliff-side by hand and work was continuing in this manner in some places.

Here is our guide standing on the path towards the gorillas.  He is listening to the report that trackers are giving him.  Trackers spend about 8 hours per day with the gorillas and follow them constantly over that period.  However, they need to leave the gorilla group over night in order to sleep.  Thus, trackers must wake up every morning and go find the gorilla trail.

Most groups of gorillas in Bwindi are not habituated and don't have tracker groups looking for them.  It is only the habituated groups that allow themselves to be visited by Muzungu tourists for one hour each day.

This woman and her child were walking up the same mountains as us--without hiking boots, water, or snacks.  This is one of the only pictures we took of a Ugandan woman with a baby.  There were many woman dressed like this--in fact having 8 babies is normal for each family so women at this age probably already have a small family.  The dress is stunning--we saw lots of colorful cloth that was used in these types of patterns.  It shocked me how much pride people took in the way they dressed--Saturday and Sunday brought out suits and traditional wear similar to this woman, but dressier.  No one was wearing cotton t-shirts on the weekend--they would have looked like slobs (I looked like a slob).  And yes, I did take this picture of a person as if they were a part of the scenery (you can read my vent about the white girl with extensions above).

The field is sorgum--the main grain that is planted in the area and we are getting close to the actual forest!!

We are getting even closer--you can see how thick the vegetation gets in the National Park!

Ok, one quick stop to take a picture of my beautiful wife heading into the jungle.

Tree ferns dominated in the creek-bed areas that had lots of moisture and seemed to stay very cool in temperature.

These ferns are big!  This is still the entrance to Bwindi.

Impenetrable?  Maybe if we didn't have a team of eight guys to track the gorillas for us.

A first glance through the trees at our friends the gorillas.  It was so exciting to be the first two people to spot them--quite a feeling to come upon a group of human-like animals.

This is an immature male--he does not have a silver back yet and thus has no mating rights within the group.

The gorillas were quite comfortable in trees, on vines, skimming up the trunk of huge trees, walking on the ground, laying around, wrestling--pretty much being anywhere within their environment.

Relaxing is a big part of a gorilla's life.

Much of the time the gorillas were sitting, eating, and watching us creep closer.  Once our party got too close they would gradually get up and make a gorilla-sized hole through the underbrush.  They would leave behind a host of flies that numbered in the thousands.  We dealt with those pesky flies as we crept through the brush to catch another glance.

This guy was happy to pose for the camera in an open nest-like section of the brush.  You can see some of the flies near his underbelly--they are the red/brown dots (yes you can see about 100 around his fur).

The power of gorillas seems extremely understated.  They are so powerful, yet with a single movement can impress you with unbelievable strength.  Please look at the gorilla exclusive post for more of the pictures and links to video.

Their eyes were so beautiful.

Is this a guy you would think of messing with?  No way!  Although, the gorillas were remarkably peaceful--even with each other.

This is the picture we saw a lot of the time--the pictures above are brief instances when we really got a close look.  See the videos for a more life-like experience.

I believe this is a species of sunbird on a Lobelia plant.  Very pretty colors--on the way out of Bwindi.

This guy reminds me of the Angry Birds game.

Another different sunbird on the same set of lobelia plants.

These are the guys who tracked with us.  The gun is to scare away forest buffalo and elephants that may come across our path.

This is the volcano Muhavura--it is 4100 meters tall and we climbed from the very bottom to the very top on this day.  Yikes!!  I was hoping that we wouldn't climb the whole thing when we were looking up at the mountain.  It was one vertical mile and back--1700 meters of climbing, then 1700 meters back down.  It was our biggest single day of hiking in vertical that we have every accomplished.  I don't know if it will be beat.  Our knees are already nearing 28 years of age.

A cool shot of an average town under the mountain.

Beginning in the farm fields, then all the way to the top.  Whoah.

Up at altitude--we made it past the tree line and are enjoying a nice snack.

Here is the whole crew--our guide in the yellow, Emma, and many park guides, plus a porter.  Emma is making a weird face--don't know what that is about.

This is me with the three ladies that made it to the top of the mountain--next time you go for a long walk think about these 16-17 year old girls who climbed a vertical mile in hand-me-down shoes.  Pretty baller.

Us and Emma--he is smiling in this one :)

These are the two university students that were studying tourism that joined us.

We finally made it down!!  That was painful...

This is the street outside of our hotel in Kisoro.  The big building down the street on the right is a church.  I don't know what the other one was--beautiful in the morning light!

Pretty normal street shot--lots of motorbikes around.

This looks like a spot where people fill up water--there were a lot of little stations like this that people used on a daily basis.  They would bring big plastic containers that they could carry on their head or a bicycle back home.