Our trip to Uganda earlier this year was the third safari trip we have been on in the last eight years. If I'm predicting the future here, this will not be the last one. There are at least one or two more out there in next few years, I'm thinking. Yeah, I know I said that in my last post also.
This trip was a little bit different from the last two times we've set foot on Africa. Many of our days this year involved seeking out a single species in a specific location, rather than venturing out into a landscape inhabited by a variety of animals to see what we could find. That resulted in three days devoted almost exclusively to chimpanzees, gorillas and shoebills. All good stuff, but at some point we wanted some real variety and the opportunity to see multiple species co-existing next to each other. We hoped we would have that opportunity on two safari drives in Queen Elizabeth National Park scheduled in the middle of our itinerary.
Sometimes nature cooperates spectacularly and sometimes it doesn't. And quite honestly, it didn't at Queen Elizabeth. Yes, we saw lots of Ugandan kobs and buffalo and waterbucks and some hippos and a few lions from a distance doing not much at all, but we also spent time driving through a scorched earth part of the park on our second drive with no wildlife to speak of. In defense of QENP here, our first drive did feature some excellent looks at a family of elephants, but by and large, we didn't get what I expected out of two trips into the park.
I realize I am spoiled here. Excellent looks at a family of elephants is considered a sort of failure. Hey, I wanted more.
After our morning drive on our second day at Queen Elizabeth, our schedule had us taking a boat trip on the Kazinga Channel, which I honestly knew nothing about. It was an optional activity which I read as not essential (I mean I know that is what optional means...) because the quality and quantity of what one would see on such a trip would not measure up to what was in the Park. Of course, we went anyway. Why would we not? It's not like we are going to skip some experience in a place we will likely never visit again.
Good thing we did. THIS was the safari experience we needed on this trip.
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| A pod of hippos (including one albino) and an hadada ibis. |
On Uganda's western border, the one it shares with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there sit two lakes: Lake Albert (named in 1864 after Queen Victoria of Britain's deceased husband, Albert) and Lake Edward (named in 1888 after Queen Victoria's son, who later became King Edward VII). Neither of these names, of course, are the original names of the lakes. They were given those monikers after being "discovered" by British explorers in the nineteenth century.
Just east of Lake Edward, there is a smaller lake located entirely within the borders of Uganda called Lake George. This one too is named after a British monarch, Queen Victoria's grandson, who later became King George V. Lake George is also not the original name of this lake. Like Lake Edward, Lake George got its current name in 1888. In fact, it was the same person, Henry Morton Stanley, who named both lakes.
I know that's altogether too many royals. For the record, the original names of these lakes, which are still used by some, are Mwitanzige (Albert), Rwitanzigye or Rweru (Edward) and Katunguru (George). I always think it's important to recognize the names given to places by the people who were there first. It should also be noted here that Idi Amin Dada, who served as the third president of Uganda, re-named Lake Edward after himself in the 1970s but, well, he didn't last very long after that and when he was deposed, I believe his name was erased from pretty much everything. That tends to happen with deposed dictators. But that's a whole other story and one that won't be told on this particular blog.
Queen Elizabeth National Park, the one that produced less excitement than hoped for us in terms of safari drive wildlife sightings, surrounds the entirety of the Uganda side of Lake Edward and extends eastward all the way to Lake George. Between the two lakes and entirely within the park, there is a 40 kilometer (25 miles for those of us who don't speak metric) or so long waterway called the Kazinga Channel. The channel is about 500 to 600 meters wide (about a third of a mile) and isn't that deep at about nine to ten meters (30 feet) at its deepest point. It's a perfect habitat for a number of species of animals and birds, and particularly for two of Africa's largest mammals.
Maybe that's where all the animals we didn't find in the Park were.
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| A totally different pod of hippos (with some African buffalo) and a Nile crocodile. |
Our cruise vessel for our afternoon on the Kazinga Channel was a not-so-sleek looking green boat with a canvas canopy supported on some poles mounted to the outside of the port and starboard sides. Other than the fact that it pretty much perfectly seated our group of 12, there was nothing ideal or remarkable about this craft. We added a driver (Eddie) and a guide (Monday) and we set sail. We were not setting any speed records in this boat but then that was never the point to begin with. Let's go find some animals.
Before we do, though, let me say that I may have our guide's name wrong. I usually write down peoples' names when we meet them in the Notes app on my iPhone. I neglected to do so here. I know our guide was named after a day of the week and I know it wasn't Wednesday through Saturday, but there's a chance his name was Sunday or Tuesday.
He was amazing, by the way. As was Eddie. These guys worked very hard to get everyone on our boat some incredible looks at and pictures of wildlife. And the boat that I just mocked? It was awesome too. It took us close to some animals and brought us back and remained afloat. What else did we really need?
It may seem counterintuitive to be excited about a water safari. I mean, you might be thinking what happens if the animals move away from shore and onto the land? And while sure that's an issue, the same question is valid when you are in a vehicle on land. You can only drive in certain parts of the parks. It's not like you can follow a lion or a herd of elephants somewhere if they move away from where you are watching them from. If they decide to move away from the road, you cannot chase.
There are a few advantages to a water safari.
First, you can see animals in the water or along the shore that you can't see on land. You aren't likely to see crocodiles or wading birds like herons or storks or ibis in the middle of the savannah. There's no food there for any of those animals and they might themselves become just that for some other predator. Before you roll your eyes at crocodiles and birds, let me say you haven't seen true beauty in a reptile until you have laid eyes in person on the Nile crocodile and its gorgeous light green skin. Just beautiful.
Second, animals which venture down to the water often stay there for a while. There is little that is going to move some of them out voluntarily. Water is life, after all.
Finally, animals don't typically attack in the water. There are some exceptions but it's difficult for animals to move quickly in water and maintain speed. Quite simply, you can get closer most times that you ever would on land.
It didn't take long after we set off from the dock to find our first major wildlife sighting. Right along the edge of the channel was a very large pod of hippos cooling themselves off in the midday sun. Included in their number was an albino hippo, the first time I have ever seen such a thing. Sunburn is a problem for hippos in general in Africa. I can't imagine the peril if there is less pigment in the skin.
When we first traveled to sub-Saharan Africa, one of the animals I wanted to see more than most was a hippo. These things are huge and I wanted to get up close and personal with one or more than one to the greatest extent possible. An adult male can weigh up to 3,500 kilograms. That's almost 8,000 pounds. And all they eat is vegetation. They are crazy big.
We definitely saw lots of hippos along the Chobe River in 2015. We also found out that they don't particularly do much. They just sort of cluster together in the water with their heads above the surface and float or stand there. They generally don't get out of the water, they don't interact with each other and they don't do much moving around, at least not until it's pitch black at night and you can't see them at all. The luster around hippos that I had before that first trip fast faded away.
We didn't spend a lot of time watching hippos on that first safari trip. We found a lot but we didn't linger for one reason and one reason alone: they are very territorial and can be very aggressive. So, yes, I know I wrote earlier about animals not attacking in the water. The hippopotamus is definitely an exception to that rule. If you are in a small boat, like we were on the Chobe seven plus years ago, the prospect of an adult male hippo moving deceptively quickly in the water in your direction is a scary thought. But in a larger boat that's clearly larger than the largest male? They are not so tough. In a larger vessel, you can linger and watch.
That first group of hippos we saw in the Kazinga Channel wasn't the only pod we saw. That first group (and I'm going from memory and counting heads on pictures) was maybe 15 or 20. The next group we found was probably double that size. We did have one male from that second group charge our boat but he bailed out before he got close to us. He knew he wasn't going to overturn us and eventually, I guess, he figured we were probably not going to harm him or his pod. So he went back to being a hippo. Which is all we really wanted.
We encountered some incredible hippo things on the Kazinga Channel. We saw what was probably the smallest baby hippo that we will ever see. Monday told us it was born just two days earlier. It was so new, that the placenta was still clinging to its mother's body. TMI I am sure there but this baby was super, super small. Of course, it was already in the water. You can see its back and the back of its head next to its mother's head in the last picture above.
We also witnessed a bit of a hippo fight, although it appeared in the end to be a misunderstanding and not a fight between males for dominance or something like that. There is nothing like a hippo or two or three clashing in the water to draw your attention to them. These things are giant (I know I already said that) and they displace a ton of water when they move quickly.
The last thing I'll say here about hippos is about that baby. Just before we headed back to the dock, a crocodile slid into the water near the baby. The mother moved in between the croc and her newborn and essentially escorted the crocodile back to shore. The crocodile did not fight that escort.
So, hippos were obviously one of the two "Africa's largest mammals" in the Kazinga Channel that I referenced earlier in this post. The other was also equally obviously the elephant.
So here's the thing about elephants and water. They need a lot of it every day. An adult elephant needs about 180 to 220 liters of water per day (in addition to about 650 pounds of food per day) so when they get to a spot where they can drink, they are liable to stay there for a while. And when they do, they are completely exposed to view. Both those things are great for elephant watching. They also can't hide any members of their group (like babies) in quite the same way they can when they are traveling from place to place. Everyone drinks, so if you are elephant watching, you get to see all of the herd.
Hippos might charge a boat, even if they have no chance of toppling it, but elephants don't. They just aren't fast enough in water. So while they may perceive us tourists as some kind of threat, they don't see us as scary enough to move away and they don't have the ability to attack beyond some kind of on-land bluffing and blustering (we did get this behavior from one bull who shows us ears-out how tough he was going to be in the future but ultimately, he ran away). It's a perfect situation for watching and learning, particularly because the nervousness at being out in the open causes the herd to behave in unique ways, particularly as it relates to sheltering their young (see the picture below where the very tiny baby is drinking wholly underneath its mother).
Truth be told here on this boat cruise, we had a good idea that we'd see a lot of elephants because after we were done eating lunch that day, we saw about 30 or 40 elephants drinking at various times with a boat really close to them. We figured (correctly) that we would likely be on the same boat later that same day. When we watched from the shore, the elephants kept coming, more and more one after the other. There were an astonishing number there for us to see. The photographs below are from that viewing before we boarded the boat.
There's one other advantage to watching elephants from the water: the viewing angle is better. I'm serious. You are generally closer to the ground sitting in a boat than you are standing in a vehicle. Add to that the fact that the boat is likely usually sitting lower than the shore and you pretty much have a perspective with these animals like you would have if you were standing next to them. But without actually standing next to them. So...longer looks, more open looks, better perspective. Being on the water is the way to go.
We had a couple of really intimate experiences that stand out on this boat ride. And yes, intimate applies to elephants like it does for gorillas and chimpanzees. There is some real high intelligence looking back at you.
In addition to the young bull who tried to scare us off, we spent a good amount of time watching an older bull feed while standing in the water. Monday estimated his age at 25 years (the oldest recorded elephant age in the wild is 89) and we could definitely see some scars as a result of those years, mostly in the rips and tears in his ears which we were close enough to see without binoculars or zoom lenses. There is something incredible and peaceful about watching an elephant just eat. The way they use the tips of their trunks to pluck vegetation off the plant or out of the ground then spoon it into their mouths while looking around and showing enough size to make anything the size of a boat know how much power there is there. I could honestly just watch all day.
The one real drawback to a water safari is there are some species you just aren't going to see much at all if ever. Cats and other predators are probably not spending time at the river during the middle of the day. Too hot and too much work. Now, seven or eight years ago, I would have been thrilled with a whole host of hippos and elephants with a few crocodiles and buffalo thrown in for good measure. But to make a water safari truly special today, there has to be something other than hippos and elephants. Ours had birds.
I know, I know. I get it. It's always about the birds with me lately. But this trip was a true bonanza. I went to Africa this year with hopes that we would see some kingfishers and some bee-eaters. We saw three species of the former and two of the latter on this one cruise through the Kazinga Channel alone. But better than just seeing them, we saw them being active and we saw some species in pairs or groups rather than just one bird by itself.
So...bee-eaters. These birds, as their name suggests, exist on a diet of bees, wasps and hornets. They are brightly colored and have curved beaks which I can only imagine is specially shaped somehow to catch their favorite foods. We watched one blue-cheeked bee-eater dart back and forth from its perch on a thorny tree to dive over the channel and repeat and repeat. They are tiny and fast and about impossible to photograph because they are seemingly constantly on the move. We did manage to get a couple of good snaps of a pair of cinnamon-chested bee-eaters (behind some vines) before they flew off and we never saw them again. The blue-cheeked bee-eater also managed to stay still just long enough for me to get one or two good pictures.
I should note here that taking pictures on a rocking boat is way more difficult than on a stationary vehicle on land. Also, Eddie, our driver, was instrumental in a lot of these bird sightings. Huge kudos to him there.
On the kingfisher side of things, we saw three different species of kingfisher in our week in Uganda in the Mabamba Swamp, the Queen Elizabeth National Park and at the Kazinga Channel. Those three would be the brightly colored malachite kingfisher, the black-and-white pied kingfisher and the woodland kingfisher. The malachite is incredibly difficult to get on film. Or it was the day we cruised the Channel. Explaining why there are no pics of that one on here.
There were far more pied kingfishers to see that afternoon than any other species. We managed to see them perched in ones, twos and threes and also fishing. Threesome of pieds seemed to be really common, with at least two of them fighting while the other watched. Males competing for females, maybe?
We also managed to see a woodland kingfisher catch a fish that seemed to be about the size of its head, bash the fish on the tree that it was perched on (to kill it, I guess) and then down it in on smooth gulp. I love these sorts of looks at birds and animals because they don't happen every day on every trip. Observing behaviors is definitely a cumulative experience that requires a lot of luck and/or a lot of trips. I'm up for both. Now I just need a lot more time off.
In addition to the bee-eaters and the kingfishers on our Kazinga Channel cruise, we saw ibis and lapwings and Egyptian geese on the shores and red-billed oxpeckers picking at open wounds on the backs of one or two hippos (lovely stuff, I know...). We also found a pair of my most favorite birds of prey, the African fish eagle.
If there's a more perfectly put together bird of prey out there than the fish eagle, I don't know what it is. We first saw these birds along the Chobe River in 2015 and then again at Lake Manyara National Park in Tanzania in 2018 (the same place we first saw our first bee-eater) and I fell in love both times. You might think they look very much like the bald eagles that you can see in the United States and you wouldn't necessarily be wrong. They both have dark bodies with white heads, they both build massive nests and they both have yellow beaks with striking eyes. Yes, I realize the massive nests doesn't describe either species of bird at all.
The difference for me (and where the fish eagle separates from the bald eagle) is in the details. The fish eagle is sleeker than the bald eagle; its shoulders are not so obvious as its American counterpart and its head tapers into the body in a much more elegant way. The coloring is also far more striking. The fish eagle's head is whiter and extends further down its torso; its beak is a much deeper yellow and tipped in black; and its eyes are dead black. The bald eagle is more muted, with almost blond eyes. Fish eagle wins hands down here. It is one of the most put together, while also being a vicious hunter, birds out there.
The best safari trips are those with amazing, unfettered views of amazing wildlife. By every measure, this cruise on the water between Lakes Edward and George fit into that category with flying colors. Put me on a boat surrounded by elephants with some Nile crocodiles, some kingfishers and a pair of African fish eagles thrown in and I'll be a happy man every day. And that's not even considering the bee-eaters and the hippos. I could spend all day on the water just watching the birdlife. Africa is chock full of incredible-looking birds. I need to spend a lot more time than we have just being there and watching. There's a lot of time left to do that, I'm sure.
I know better to say this but I'm going to say it anyway. I've been on a lot of wildlife watching trips in my life. Sometimes nature cooperates spectacularly and sometimes it doesn't. I can't imagine any way that our trip on the Kazinga Channel was atypical. I have to believe that hippos and elephants bob in the water or visit the shores every day and I believe there are incredible bird sightings along with them. I know the odds of me ever visiting this part of the world is super remote, but I am sure to tell anyone that has any option to take this cruise to say yes and never look back. No cats? Who cares? This was the best safari we took on this trip and it was totally unexpected. I'll treasure this forever.
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| Young elephant. Tough guy. So very cute. |
Like our day visiting gorillas in Mgahinga National Park and finding chimpanzees in Kibale National Park, our afternoon on a boat on the Kazinga Channel was one stop on our Gorilla Treks & Safari Drives tour package through Uganda and into Rwanda with G Adventures. There are many places on this world we want to travel and while we wouldn't necessarily rule out other travel companies, I believe G Adventures will always be our first stop.
This tour was an optional activity on our itinerary. If I'm remembering right, it was an extra $30. I can't imagine skipping it. It was (in case it wasn't obvious) one of the most spectacular experiences on our entire tour. For what it's worth, I have provided feedback to G Adventures about making this just a part of the standard itinerary.
This is my last post about Uganda on this blog. Possibly forever. Who knows? There are so many places on my list and the list seems to get bigger every year. I'm not saying I'm never going to go back to the same place ever again but there are a whole lot of places easier to get to than Uganda. I'll say two things in wrapping up our Uganda experience: (1) everyone we met in Uganda was awesome and the country is just gorgeous; and (2) our guides Arthur and Nixon both said their favorite place in Uganda was Murchison Falls National Park. If there's ever a return trip to the Pearl of Africa, it has to include a stop at Murchison Falls.
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