I was wondering why most of the people like travelling to Uganda for their tours, little did I know that this was listed among the top ten countries to visit regarding tourism activities. I arranged a self drive tour to Uganda with another colleague of mine and we took private jeep from this reputable Uganda Car Rental. We contacted Moses one of the experienced tour guide in Uganda who was recommended to us by our friends due to the exceptional services they rendered to them.
After consulting him, he guided us on how to move and the type of car that could enable us to finish up our safaris effectively, booked for us lodges which included, budget, luxury and mid-range and even some of the permits for the different activities within the park. Uganda being the pearl of Africa, she has got ten national parks distributed in the east, west and the north of the country. We hired a Toyota land cruiser from Nature Adventure Africa Safaris Limited at $150 per day, due to the fact that we were too curious about what is contained in the Uganda parks, we decided to travel to seven national parks.
We were to spend twenty days in Uganda, on arrival at Entebbe airport, we were given the car after signing the terms and we instantly cleared all the money for the period we were to use the car. Since we reached early in the morning we just traveled to Lake Mburo national park along Mbarara road which was our first park to visit, en-route, we had our lunch at Garden Courts Hotel in Masaka. We embarked into our vehicle and proceeded to Lake Mburo but here we reached in afternoon, we put our properties at Mihingo lodge and we went to the park headquarters for clearance and briefing.
At exactly 4pm, we went for a boat voyage from Rwonyo jetty at the lake, this gave us a modernized way of viewing crocodiles, hippos and buffaloes, birds such as Shoe bills, Hammerkops and fishing eagles in their massive nests all over the trees surrounding the lake was observed having enjoyed a launch trip we went back to the lodge for an overnight as we were waiting for our next activity the following day. Early in the morning after a delicious break first, we went back to the park for a hike at Rwonyo at exactly 7am, this hike led us to the salty rock which attracts many animals to lick. In the process we got a chance to see the so called hyenas and the impala animals which are nowhere else.
In the evening we went back to the hotel again for an overnight, the next day early after our break first, we traveled to Kabale for Bwindi Impenetrable national park for gorilla tracking a permit which we bought at $600 per person in the south western Uganda. The time we reached the park didn’t enable us to track gorillas that day instead we waited for the next day and here we stayed at Ruhija Gorilla Safari Lodge. The next day since we had booked permit for tracking at the Ruhija sector and we tracked the Kyaguriro gorilla family out of the three families in this sector.
We were given rangers from the park who headed us in this activity; this was a challenging activity since this sector is in the remote areas of the park and it took us some time to get where the gorillas spent their night, we finished the tracking in the evening but fortunately we had carried our packed lunch from the hotel. As we were coming back from the forest, we landed on groups of over 100 bird species which added another impressive vision for our tracking in this park.
The fact is Bwindi and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park are the true habitat for over 400 endangered mountain gorillas and Bwindi has got fourteen gorilla families distributed in the four major sectors of Buhoma, Ruhija, Nkuringo and Rushaga. The fourth day we traveled to Mgahinga national park for Golden monkey trekking at only $50 per person. For real Mgahinga is where gold meets silver because of its silver back gorillas and the golden monkeys which dominated the park. Here we slept at Bunyonyi Overland Resort. Early in the morning we embarked into our car and we headed to Queen Elizabeth national park. This took us almost 5hours to reach this park.
