Top 10 Species List

When we embarked on our first sub-Saharan African safari trip in 2015, we didn't know what exactly to expect. I mean, sure, we knew we'd see some animals. Elephants, hopefully. Giraffes and lions, maybe. I don't know what else. Buffalo? Leopards? Hippos? We didn't really think too much about what we'd see in specific because at that point we hadn't seen anything ever outside of some sort of zoo. The first elephant we'd see would be the first wild elephant we'd ever seen. Same for giraffes, lions, buffalo, leopards, hippos and everything else on the entire continent of Africa. In essence, we were ready to take what we could get and we'd be perfectly happy with whatever we saw.

That changed with our second safari trip. On our 2018 vacation to Kenya and Tanzania, we had a top ten list of animals we'd never seen in the wild. I'm not sure of the exact order but (and I'm going from memory here), I believe we had leopard, rhino, zebra, painted dog, ostrich, secretary bird, cheetah, gerenuk, hyena and pangolin on the list. We saw seven of the ten and went home extremely happy, missing only the painted dog (extremely rare in Kenya and Tanzania), the gerenuk (not where we went in 2018) and the pangolin (nocturnal). Seven out of ten ain't bad as far as I'm concerned.

So fast forward to 2023 and our trip to Uganda, a trip we had scheduled for October 2020 before the world and viruses had other ideas. And OF COURSE, we had another top ten list. After all, doing it one time in 2018 meant we couldn't back off and not do it this time, right? 

Here's how we fared against this year's top ten list. Spoiler alert: we didn't do quite as well as we did in 2018.

1. Mountain Gorillas

OK, OK, so this is a complete softball of sorts. I mean gorillas were the main attraction on this trip. We couldn't NOT see these primates up close and personal, could we? That's like going to see Taylor Swift and having the show end after beabadoobee and Gracie Abrams are done with their sets. 

And yes, I had to look at who was opening for Taylor Swift and no, we didn't get tickets. 

So of course, we did see gorillas in Uganda from feet away on foot with nothing between us and them and it was amazing. The intimacy was just all around. There was real creature to creature connection here, and by that I mean connection between human creatures and some of the nine gorillas we trekked to see. The trip delivered what it promised to deliver. Nature sometimes throws you a curveball and you don't get to see what you came to see. Fortunately, that wasn't the story on this trip. Number one checked off!

2. Chimpanzees

Yep, also a bit of a softball, here. Our chimpanzee trek in the Kibale National Park was incredible and totally unexpected in its awesomeness. No, it didn't beat seeing the gorillas in the wild from feet away but that day, I wondered how seeing gorillas could possibly be better than seeing chimpanzees.

Before we left home for Uganda, I actually didn't consider seeing chimps in the wild a slam dunk. I did actually think we could strike out (to continue the mixed sports allusions) on this walk and see absolutely nothing whatsoever. I loved this day. The intelligence and human-ness of the chimpanzees we got close to really shone through in a way watching few other species could possibly have done.

I love the picture of the chimpanzee above by the way. I see it as very Planet of the Apes like. The smarts absolutely come through loud and clear.

3. Shoebills

OK, so three for my first three. This one was not a gimme and we only saw one but we did lay eyes on one of these giant birds in person in the Mabamba Swamp. While there was absolutely a very high chance we could venture out on our shoebill day and not see a single one of these creatures, the shoebill was third on my list because we made a specific trip to see this bird. That was sort of a theme on this trip; we took three species-specific safari days, one each for gorillas, chimpanzees and shoebills. These were the top three things we targeted on this trip that we had never seen before. We got lucky and got all three.

Considering we saw maybe about seven or eight gorillas, thirty or so chimpanzees and just one shoebill, I know we had some luck on our side this day. Never feel like you are entitled to a show when nature is involved.

4. Painted Dogs

No picture on this one because quite simply, we didn't see any. No encounter, no picture. That's how this post is going to roll. Yes, this is a repeat (and a miss) from 2018.

When we first visited sub-Saharan Africa, we had no idea there was such a thing as a painted dog (sometimes called African wild dog). We saw one of those yellow, diamond-shaped road signs warning of the presence of painted dogs on our way from the Victoria Falls airport to our hotel on the first day we ever spent in sub-Saharan Africa and we actually mocked it (like...who wants to see a painted dog?). How stupid and ignorant were we back then? But legitimately, we didn't understand what these things were. Never heard of them.

Painted dogs are for sure an apex predator in Africa. They are not the same as hyenas, which sort of fill a role somewhere between hunter and scavenger on the savannah. These things are fast, intelligent, coordinated, aggressive pack hunters who relentlessly pursue their prey until they kill it. They are impressively scary. But they weren't where we went in Uganda. Nowhere close really.

That sign that we saw in Zimbabwe in 2015 was maybe not the closest we got to seeing these animals live. We actually went on two off-road wild goose chases looking for painted dogs on our way to and from Chobe National Park on that trip with neither yielding a sighting for me (although our guide claimed he'd seen some in the headlights on the night off-roading adventure). 

5. Gerenuks

No gerenuk picture either on this post. A gerenuk (also on my 2018 top 10 list) is often called a giraffe-gazelle, so named because it's a gazelle with a long neck (duh...). Its neck length allows it to reach medium-hanging leaves that animals like impalas and kudus can't reach because their mouths never get to that height off the ground. If its neck weren't enough of an advantage, the gerenuk can also stand on its hind legs to get even more elevation.

Because these lists of species that I make are often emotional, I didn't check out if all the animals that made the list actually live in the places we were traveling. There are no gerenuks in Uganda. Their range is further east in eastern Kenya, eastern Ethiopia, Somalia and northeastern Tanzania. I'm definitely not putting them on any future list (if there ever is one) unless I'm in one of those spots in the future. 

FYI, Somalia is not on any sort of travel list for me at all. 

6. Great Blue Turacos

So from what I just wrote about gerenuks not being anywhere close to where we were headed, I may have given the impression that I pulled together this list without any research whatsoever. Not exactly true. Some of my wish list was emotional and impulsive (hence, the gerenuk and yes, rare for me, I know) but I did do a little homework ahead of time, although much of that didn't extend beyond studying the East African Birds pamphlet shown in the cover picture of this post. But that is how I found the great blue turaco.

There are not a ton of super-colorful medium to large birds in Africa, so when I saw the great blue turaco in our wildlife guides and the noticed they live in forests where we'd be heading for the first time in Africa ever, I thought there might be a chance. The great blue turaco is a bit more than two feet from head to tail when fully grown so we are not talking about a small bird here. It's brightly colored from the tip of its beak to the tip of its tail so this seemed like a bird worth looking out for.

We didn't really have to do much looking out. While we were wrapping up lunch after our chimpanzee trek, we saw five or six or these birds fly into a tree right next to the gazebo where we were eating. The lighting wasn't great. It was about high noon and the sun being almost directly overhead didn't allow me to take any pictures that weren't significantly backlit. Still...great blue turaco sighting in the books.

We did actually see a few more of these birds right after lunch when we took a stroll around the Bigodi Swamp but the lighting on that spotting was even worse than at lunch.

7. Kingfishers

I've been a little kingfisher fixated lately. We saw three different species down in Costa Rica last October and it whetted my appetite for some more sightings on this trip to Africa. I put kingfishers on the list here because I knew we'd be taking two boat rides on this vacation that might get us a look or two. It worked. We found these birds on both of those boat rides and on safari in the middle of Queen Elizabeth National Park. No shortage of kingfisher sightings on this trip. We even saw one at our hotel on Zanzibar one afternoon.

We managed to lay eyes on three different types of kingfisher in Uganda. On our trip to find shoebills in the Mabamba Swamp, we came across the black and white pied kingfishers both in the Swamp and over Lake Victoria along with the multi-colored malachite kingfishers when we arrived at the Swamp. The bird above is a woodland kingfisher that we found in the middle of Queen Elizabeth National Park nowhere near water. These birds eat fish to survive. No idea what it was doing in the middle of landscape populated almost exclusively by candelabra cacti. 

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, there are about 90 species of kingfishers distributed throughout the world. I have a lot of work to do. That also means there's a lot of places where I can find these things in the future.

8. Bee-Eaters

The place where I really fell in love with small birds, and which made me into an avid birdwatcher wherever we've been since, was Lake Manyara National Park in Tanzania. Among the many birds we saw in that Park was a carmine bee-eater. I managed to capture one sitting on a thorny branch of a tree and it's one of my favorite photographs from that trip. I thought since we saw one in Tanzania, maybe we'd be able to see some in Uganda also. We did.

Bee-eaters are little, brightly colored birds with curved beaks and a stripe that extends from their beaks to the back of their heads. They are quick and acrobatic flyers which eat (perhaps quite obviously here) bees, wasps and hornets. We only saw bee-eaters on one day on our trip but we did see two different species. The one above is (I believe) a blue-cheeked bee-eater which is generally found in northern Africa and the Middle East but which sometimes winters further south between the tropics.

Appropriately, the bee-eater above is sitting in a thorny tree. Always with the thorny trees these birds in Africa. 

9. Pangolins / 10. Aardvarks

Pangolins (like painted dogs and gerenuks) were on my 2018 list so I had to carry it forward, right? I knew there was basically no chance of seeing this nocturnal anteater so I thought I'd double down and add another nocturnal anteater, the aardvark, to round out the list in the number 10 spot. Yeah...didn't see either. I mean not even close.

So...10 species. Six seen, including multiple species of kingfishers and bee-eaters. I don't think that's too bad considering this was our third safari and we've pretty much seen every animal and bird that's an obvious and well-known African species. Sure we are missing some from the list above and there are some species of some animals (notably hyenas and zebras) that we haven't yet seen, but we've covered all the big and famous stuff by now.

I see a few more safaris in our future. I'd say at least two more on mainland Africa. Maybe more. Who knows. At least something that touches South Africa in some way and maybe a trip through the Namib Desert. Those would be my top two.

When and if either of those two (or a different one) happens, I'm not sure I'm going with a top ten list of species we want to see. I think going forward I'd prefer to take a trip to find a specific species that is missing off our list and we'll take whatever else we can see while we are on that trip. So I think the next one of these we take has to target the painted dog in a serious way. That's the one species we long to see more than any other. Sure there are some experiences we'd like to see like lions finishing a hunt or a leopard carrying a dead impala or something like that up a tree but we can't guarantee those things happening even if we see those animals. Next safari trip to Africa: painted dog has to the be target.

But that's the future. For 2023...six of ten on our list seen. I'll take that.

Malachite kingfisher, Kazinga Channel, Uganda.

You Do Not Know What You Might Be Saying

We went to Uganda to see animals. I know, I know...I started the last post with those words but they are so true. It might not be the last post about this trip that I start that way.

Our Uganda itinerary took us from Kampala to the Mabamba Swamp to Fort Portal to Kibale National Park to Queen Elizabeth National Park to Mgahinga National Park before we entered Rwanda to depart for the second half of our trip. The main attraction, the star of the entire itinerary, was clearly the gorilla trekking in Mgahinga National Park. It was the most anticipated and expensive part of the whole vacation and it was clearly advertised as the anchor of the week. But before we got there, we had some other stuff to see.

A wildlife watching trip to western Uganda is by its very definition a primate-heavy trip. There are about 13 or so different species of primates, including two different species of apes, to see on a typical vacation in that part of Africa. Before Mgahinga we'd visit Queen Elizabeth National Park where we expected to see monkeys, among other species of non-primates. Before Queen Elizabeth there were other stops to see apes or monkeys, including on the properties of two of our hotels and on a walk around the Bigodi Swamp one afternoon.

But placed first on the real honest-to-God, serious wildlife watching portion of our itinerary was a half day stop at Kibale National Park to take a chimpanzee trek. 

I don't know why exactly, but I expected this would be a bit of a fruitless endeavor. It was only scheduled for a half a day and imagined we wouldn't see too much. My attitude about this portion of our agenda was a bit strange. The only explanation I can really offer is that I've never heard anyone really rave about a day trip to see chimpanzees. Everyone who goes up into the mountains of Uganda or Rwanda to see the gorillas goes on and on and on about how fantastic the experience was. Chimps? Not so much. I've never heard a peep about it. I figured we'd walk in the woods, see a chimpanzee or two from a distance and then move on to the afternoon portion of our day.

Of course, I wouldn't really be writing this post this way if that's how it turned out.

Chimpanzees are our closest living relative. Depending on which source you read, they share 98.6% or 98.8% or something close to one of those numbers of our DNA. They have large brains. They live in communities made up of multiple families. They are omnivorous and have been known to hunt for meat in groups. They use tools. They feel empathy, particularly for younger chimpanzees. They respect their elders. They fight. They play. They tickle. They kiss. They hug. They smile. They develop bald spots. They have been known to deactivate hunters' snares. They sometimes play with crude dolls as a way of learning to become mothers. They communicate through vocalizations and gestures, including facial gestures. They just can't talk the way we can.

The foundation of humans' understanding of chimpanzee behavior was laid by Jane Goodall in the 1960s and 1970s in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. Goodall was the first to document the use of tools by chimpanzees. She was also the first to disprove the commonly held notion that chimpanzees are vegetarians, witnessing them working in groups hunting and killing colobus monkeys for food. Appropriately, Goodall's name was actually attached to the tour that took us to see the chimpanzees in Kibale National Park, one of 17 tours that GAdventures (our preferred tour operator for things like this) operates under the Jane Goodall Collection banner. 

Also appropriately, on this very tour, we heard stories while walking with a guide around the Bigodi Swamp about chimpanzees hunting red colobus monkeys. Apparently, the red colobus monkey is a "fight, not flight" monkey. Only problem is they refuse to run from chimpanzees and are no match for their strength. The result is usually death for the colobus. Goodall was right.

How awesome is it that chimpanzees can deactivate a hunter's snare, by the way? Closest living relative, I'm telling you.

Our chimpanzee day started early. Up before dawn, get all your stuff you need for the day, get in the van and let's go. No dawdling, no whining or complaining, just go. 

In case you don't know, ALL wildlife days wherever you are in the world pretty much start early. Animals do not like being out in the midday sun and they are certainly not sticking around just so some tourists can gawk at them at noon or one or two or something. Don't want to get up early? Tough. You want to do this stuff, you have to operate on the schedule of the animals you are headed to see. This isn't a zoo. I don't think we went to bed once beyond 9 or 10 p.m. once we really got into the wildlife portion of this trip. That's not unusual.

I don't know if it's a requirement for a guide on these kinds of trips to have an extreme amount of patience, but I think everyone who has shepherded us on these kinds of quests seems to be equipped with an abundance of the stuff. Their days must be like driving a bunch of schoolkids around who are overjoyed to see any sort of animal. And believe me, we are all looking out the windows. Every one of the passengers looking out every one of the windows. And sure enough, we did see some things on the road before we even got to where we were actually going. First a troop of baboons which both of our vans had to stop and stare at. I've seen baboons before and they are about the least appealing of all monkey species to me. But they were new (on this trip) and we HAD to stop. Particularly when there's a baby involved.

But the real first excitement of the day happened a few minutes later when the lead van was out of sight and us tourists in the second van watched slack jawed as a chimpanzee walked across the road in front of us. We gotta stop, right? Hit the brakes. Pile out of the van. First chimpanzee!!!

So honestly, it's amazing seeing a new species of animal in the wild. Turns out our first chimp encounter wasn't just an isolated individual but a whole group hanging out in a giant fig tree by the side of the road. There were maybe 8 or 10 individuals, including a baby (and who doesn't love baby animals?) just chilling and eating fig after fig for breakfast. Chimpanzees, by the way, have a propensity for chewing their food and removing it from their mouths to make sure it's properly chewed before swallowing. It's a bit of an odd sight. We got that at the fig tree.

I appreciated the indulgence our guide, Nixon, allowed us to have in the early morning light just to watch our closest relatives snack. Ultimately, he got us back in the van and back on track. After all we had a pre-trek briefing to attend.

We were told that some people don't see chimpanzees on these treks at all. We saw a whole family before the thing even started. So lucky!

Breakfast: chimpanzees in a fig tree.

Despite our pre-trek stop by the side of the road, we still made it to the briefing for the actual trek itself on time. We had float in our schedule, as it turned out. 

There are rules for chimpanzee treks. Don't eat on the trek. Don't chase the chimpanzees. Don't litter. Wear a mask (close relative, remember...). Don't use flash photography. If you have to poop or pee, that's OK, but you have to bury it (nobody in our group peed or pooped in the forest). And tuck your pants into your socks. I have to say, I wasn't necessarily prepared for this trip for this last rule. I didn't really bring any socks that seemed to fit the bill for tucking in but I was lucky that a pair of dress socks worked. Just.

The socks thing, by the way, is for safari ants. Apparently not poisonous but they do bite and there's some sensitive flesh in the pants area. Better to keep ants on the outside of the pants. These things were pretty much everywhere. We seemed to be constantly plucking ants off ourselves or other people during parts of our walk to find chimpanzees and some of them were pretty large. I would not have really wanted to have some of those in my pants. Pants into the socks...check!

The briefing was given by a woman named (and I apologize if I'm misspelling here) Prossie and she was just awesome. She was firm in her presentation of the rules and warned us with humor as to what might happen if we disobeyed. But she also gave me the impression that she was smart and warm and sarcastic while also totally having our back. After she was done with her talk, she grabbed a very large automatic rifle (I'm guessing on the automatic part a bit) and told us to come with her. She ended up being our guide. She was very much everything she seemed to be in front of an audience. I can't imagine anyone that day or any other day having a better guide than we had in Prossie. We got super lucky, here. Again.

We got organized and followed Prossie back down the road we had driven up all the way to the spot where we stopped on the way there. To the same fig tree with the same chimps. Yes, we had already seen this group but look, the views we got were amazing and breakfast (for the chimps, not us) with this clear a view was just incredible. Super clear and great picture opportunities. But ultimately, we wanted more. We wanted different looks. We wanted closer looks. We wanted chimpanzees on the ground very, very near to us. After all, wasn't this supposed to be a "trek" and not just a "stand by the side of the road"?

Let's head into the forest.

Heading into Kibale National Park (top). Following Prossie following chimpanzees (bottom).

Entering the forest of Kibale National Park is as straightforward as it sounds. There's no walking to a trailhead or anything like that. Step off the asphalt, move aside some twigs and brush, watch out for safari ants and just plow in. There's no path, no boardwalk or anything. Just push stuff aside and move on. Follow Prossie.

And of course, there are no chimpanzees when we did this at first. Should we go back to the fig trees? There were plenty there. Why did we leave them in the tree? I know we said we wanted to go trekking but there's nothing here. Not yet, anyway.

Keep going.

Patience helps when looking for wildlife. And with the chimpanzees, we honestly needed a bit of that. There was nothing to see but there were sounds. Not ape vocalizations, but crashing from above. Something sizeable is clearly moving in the canopy overhead. But nothing is visible. Anywhere.

Then just like that, they are there. Right on the left of the trail. On the ground. Just paused there en route from where they are coming from to where they are going. Two pretty sizeable looking chimpanzees. Right on the forest floor feet from us. But not for long. They picked up and moved on, faster than we could possibly track them. Before I could even get a good picture. We let them go. Remember...no chasing the chimpanzees.

After the initial disappointment of the two chimpanzees passing in front of the path we were forging, there seemed to be more and more of these animals everywhere. Mostly in the trees around us. And they are difficult to spot and track, particularly because they keep moving around. Why don't they stay in one spot? 

Here's where Prossie's prowess as a guide came in. Walk forward. Stop. Follow me. Circle back. Stand here. Look there. She seemed to be able to position everyone in our six-person group someplace useful and valuable. Or maybe it was just me. I don't really know, I guess. It's difficult to pay attention to that sort of thing when there is wildlife to see this close.

These types of looks allowed us to ask questions and learn. How long do chimpanzees live? How old is that particular one we are looking at? How long do baby chimpanzees stay with their mothers? Are there any natural predators in Kibale? How does breeding and selection of a mate work? How long do pregnancies last?

This last line of questioning was inspired by a female in heat feeding in the trees immediately above us (fourth picture in this post). It turns out that the sexual habits of chimpanzees involve a good amount of promiscuity. Females are likely to sample or be sampled by (depending on your point of view, I guess) a number of partners before deciding ultimately who to mate with. This sampling may be several partners per day until she is ready to mate for good. I guess women's rights aren't particularly a thing in the chimpanzee community but it is a little heartening that she ultimately gets some input into who her partner will be.

The other questions? They can live decades. We saw some in their mid to late 30s. Babies are dependent on their mothers for 10 years or so. Pregnancy is about eight months. And snakes kill chimps in the forest. We did not see any snakes at all and certainly none that could take down a chimpanzee. No complaints on that one from me. 

That patience I mentioned earlier? It paid off. 

Eventually, we found a great number of chimpanzees coming down to the forest floor. Maybe not all of them all the way down, but enough to be of great interest to us. In ones and twos and in small families. To nap, to rest, to just lie down, to socialize with each other, to groom. And in some respects (and I'm supposing a bit here), just to see what all these crazy humans are doing on the ground in their neck of the woods. 

These animals are incredibly tolerant of our presence. Look, I'm sure they see people like me every day, white people dressed in hiking pants tucked into dress socks with headbands on to stop the sweat pouring into our eyes and with fairly good-sized cameras to allow us to capture as many awesome pictures as possible. They clearly know we are there. When we look into those light brown eyes they clearly see us looking at them while they look back at us. And they are totally OK with it all. Well, most of it all.

Of course, people are stupid, right? They can't resist the temptation to get as close as humanly possible to a chimpanzee. They want selfies. They want to walk behind the apes so they can get a picture of themselves in the background with a wild animal in the foreground (which is effectively surrounding them). And unbelievably, most of that is actually OK. Only once did we see a chimpanzee sit up and shake a small sapling in apparent warning when someone got just a bit too close. 

But to a point, there seems to be an understanding that we are not there to do harm. And that's totally incredible. For us.

Of course, the rules that were covered in our introductory briefing addressed closeness. 25 feet or 8 meters is the guideline for distance. I can tell you it's almost impossible to maintain that cushion between them and us. Sure, some excitement got the best of us sometimes and drove us to within about four feet of the objects of our attention (yes, I'm blaming the excitement here). But they also come deliberately close to us on their own. Not just mature chimps either. We saw some younger members of the group really near to us. Maybe not by themselves, but their guardians appeared unconcerned with our presence so close to their offspring. We have a great camera that allows us to take really detailed close-ups. Some of the pictures on this post, though, are taken with my iPhone 8. Yes, we were iPhone 8 close.

The incredible intimacy of this experience sticks out. In a number of ways.

First, the closeness between us and the chimpanzees imparted an automatic level of connectedness. Before we walked into the Kibale National Park forest, pretty much every wildlife interaction I'd had on the continent of Africa involved me sitting or standing on a boat or in a car a good distance from whatever I was viewing. Now, sure, I've seen a warthog or two and the odd troop of baboons here and there in towns or on hotel properties but never like a significantly sized, potentially dangerous or lethal species in front of me while I was on foot.

I'm not dissing warthogs here and I certainly don't want to be attacked by even a single baboon but clearly an adult chimpanzee a couple of strides from me is a whole different ballgame. Seeing from a distance is not seeing from four feet away. The level of detail and observation is completely different up close.

But more than just the physical distance was the connection we witnessed between chimpanzees, although that totally had to do with how close we got. There were obviously intimate connections between individuals in the forest, some through vocalizations but more often through visual lines of sight or physical contact. We saw them play with each other and watch out for each other and comfort each other with their closeness. We also saw them checking with other members of their group from a distance through sounds or glances. Just making sure everyone is good, essentially.

One of the interactions between chimpanzees requiring and demonstrating trust is grooming. It's not just about picking bugs off another chimp; it's a social bonding experience that's extremely important in chimpanzee society. I feel fortunate that we got to see this in our time in the forest. After watching one older male chimpanzee chill in front of us for 20 minutes or so, he got up, walked over to a nearby companion and sat down for some quality grooming time. First one, then the other. You groom me and I groom you. It was a privilege to see this, particularly after spending so long with one half of the pair and understanding the immediate leadup to that social connection.

As if it weren't amazing enough to be able to spend time with these creatures, all of this takes place in an absolutely gorgeous environment. It's lush and cool and very, very green. I don't spend a lot of time in forests in my everyday life but if I were to walk in the woods every once in a while, it wouldn't be a forest that looked like the one in Kibale National Park. It's completely exotic.

All of that added up to an amazing experience. I can't believe that I've never read anything about how incredible a walk in the woods to watch chimpanzees can be. It's also an hours-long experience and that fact alone is important. So many wildlife encounters are extremely brief. This one lasted over three hours. Gorilla tracking (we'll get to that soon enough on this blog...) gives you an hour with a single small family. Our chimpanzee experience lasted more than three times as long as that and we saw probably two dozen chimps or maybe more. This was without doubt one of the best days I've spent following animals in the wild. Not just in Africa. Anywhere. If someone ever asks you if you want to go on a chimpanzee trek, just say yes. And wear long socks.

One of the things I was most surprised about in our three plus hours in the woods was the almost complete lack of vocalizations from the chimpanzees. Yes, we heard some in the excitement of play or chase and we heard and saw one older chimpanzee call out to some distant companions to make one of those treasured long distance touches that we witnessed. But overall, they were remarkably quiet, preferring to make connections between each other in more silent ways. I expected a lot more noise.

We did at one point hear one human imitating the calls they heard the chimpanzees make, which was a little surprising for a couple of reasons. First, "do not mimic chimpanzees" was on the list of rules posted on the wall of the briefing room, although I guess not everyone reads and follows the rules. Second, the warning about doing exactly that points out something incredibly simple and probably obvious given a little thought: you do not know what you might be saying. 

Look, I don't know about you, but I don't speak chimpanzee. There are also a whole lot of human languages that I also don't speak and I don't, as a general rule, go around imitating people in foreign countries. There are a few reasons for this but one is definitely that I do not, under any circumstances, want to say something offensive or that might incite someone to do something to me that I don't want to have happen. 

Same rule applies to chimpanzees, folks. The last thing I want to do let out some kind of aggressive chimpanzee scream or hit on a chimpanzee's mate. We were also told not to replay any videos filmed while on our walk that involved any sort of vocalization. Want to make chimp sounds? Inside voice on your walk, here. Or do it when you get back to the hotel. You do not, after all, know what you might be saying.

The rules. Rule number 7 is important.

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How We Did It

Our chimpanzee trek in the Kibale National Park was one stop on our tour package through Uganda and into Rwanda with G Adventures, who have become our preferred tour company for destinations like Uganda where we are not willing to take on the logistics of arranging everything ourselves. The exact tour we took was the Gorilla Treks & Safari Drives tour.

At the introductory briefing for this activity, everyone scheduled to trek that day was divided into groups by tour company. It appeared to me that everyone on the trek at the same time as us was there with a safari or tour operator of some sort. I got two things out of that: (1) clearly GAdventures doesn't have an exclusive license on this stuff; there are plenty of options. And (2) the fact that everyone there on the same day we were there was there with some kind of tour operator suggests that this activity is easier to have someone local arrange it for you rather than doing it yourself. 

I might be wrong on this last point but I'm going to continue to let others organize these kinds of activities for me.

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