In search of the elusive Shoebill, Greg and I took advantage of having Memorial Day off and headed to the Mabamba Swamp (in case you haven’t noticed,
we like spending holidays with animals).
What was supposed to be an hour trip, took us almost two hours to get there!
Pretty standard for Kampala, but still a pain in the butt every time.
We lucked out that the roads were paved for all but the last bunch of kilometers.
The unpaved roads dead-ended into the swamp meaning we were at our destination.
Upon arrival, we were greeted by multiple people all trying to be our guide for the trip.
We nicely said hi to each of the very anxious and eager guides, but went with the one that was with the local tourism group.
After checking into the visitor’s center, we hopped in a motorized canoe and were on our way.
The Mabamba Swamp is a shallow, marshy bay on the northern shore of Lake Victoria.
It is also listed as a
Ramsar Site and important bird site.
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| A few of the guys trying to be our tour guides. |
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| Our tour guide trying to spot the elusive Shoebill. |
Unfortunately for us, in the 3 or so hours that we maneuvered through different channels, we never ended up finding a Shoebill. We did, however, get to see plenty of other beautiful birds and we can now say we’ve been on Lake Victoria. This will be a trip worth taking again (we’ll just have to leave the house much much earlier for a better chance at seeing the Shoebill).
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| An African Jacana. |
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| Grey-headed Gulls. |
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| A Malachite Kingfisher. Unfortunately every time we spotted one it almost immediately flew away. |
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| A Pied Kingfisher. |
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| I believe its a Long-tailed Cormorant on the left with a Pied Kingfisher. |
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| Long-tailed Cormorants. |
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| A Little Egret. |
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| Black-headed Weaver. |
Since we were in the area, we then decided to head up to the Mpanga Forest Reserve.
We arrived at the GPS coordinates but were received by deserted looking buildings.
After sitting in the car for a few minutes to check our maps and make sure we were in the right place, a young girl came out of the building to let us know that we were indeed in the correct place.
She quickly showed us a map of the forest, which she said only had 3 trails, and sent us on our way.
I know this is Africa and things can be misleading, but there were way more than three trails.
And since this is Africa, none of them were marked as to which one they were.
We took our best guess and began our 5 km trail on the Hornbill Loop.
Almost immediately we hit a fork in the road and guessed which way to go.
We ended up on a trail outside the forest, though we blame the monkeys for distracting us and leading us astray.
We backtracked to the fork in the road and tried our luck with the other route.
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| The map we were shown, with "only" 3 trails. |
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| Red-tailed Monkey. |
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| There were a ton of these guys hopping through the trees making a ton of noise. |
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| Unfortunately, they were pretty well hidden in the forest, but being on the Hornbill Loop, we did get to see a few and heard plenty more. |
Somehow, halfway through we again ended up on the wrong path outside the forest. At this point, I’m dirty (because the trails aren’t maintained at all), covered in bug bites (even with two bug repellents) and getting very annoyed thinking we’ll be lost in this stupid forest forever. With no signs telling us which trail we were on, we had a choice to either backtrack (though we weren't sure if we could even find our way back) or press on and hope we found the main trail. We pressed on and luckily found the main trail. Though after finding the trail we weren't really sure if we were supposed to go left or right to get us to the bird viewing stand. We took a left and trekked through waist-high plants past a really large fig tree and ended up at a dead end. Having enough "fun" for the day, we hiked back to the beginning of the main trail and headed home for a much-needed shower.
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| The trail for the Hornbill Loop literally comes to a dead stop and just ends. |
All in all, I would say this was a rather disappointing park and one we will not be visiting again. Unless you really like butterflies (they have over 200 species and they were everywhere) I don’t recommend making a stop at Mpanga Forest Reserve.
