We took a road trip to our next stop – Kibale (Chee-Ba-lee) forest, home to the best chimpanzee trekking in Uganda. After was a six hour drive, we’re at Chimpundu Lodge for the next two nights. The lodge is quiet, because, yep, we’re the only ones here. Well, just us and the baboons.
Crater lake near our lodge
Seen during our drive to Kibale: A Marabou Stork hanging out in the middle of the town
Baboons hanging out at our lodge
Primate Capital of the World
We’ve planned a night hike in the forest, a walk along the Bigodi swamp, and the main event here, which is going to find the wild chimps. The swamp walk was filled with birds and primates. Kibale is called the primate capital of the world for a reason.
Cool little African frog found in a pond during our night hike
The Great Blue Turaco
We Meet the Chimpanzees
The other excursions were nice, but we’re here to find chimps. Our early morning chimp trek put us into a group of 8 for an easy one-hour forest hike. Before long, we found ourselves in the middle forest clearing.
A troop of chimpanzees were resting and eating at the treetops. That soon changed to a large and raucous chimp troop hollering, climbing down, and then running back and forth.
If you’ve never been in a forest clearing, surrounded by tall trees and listening to 30 chimpanzees screeching and hollering without being able to quite see them… well, it’s the stuff of horror movies. Luckily, we love horror movies.
The chimps came down, and it was amazing to hang out with our close genetic cousins for a while. When it ended, we strolled back to the lodge.
After two nights, it was time to head up and mountains and into a much deeper forest. The reason we started this whole trip had arrived. We’re going to find gorillas
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