Where Have All the Animals Gone?

Uganda may not be known for the amazing safaris when you compare it to Kenya or Tanzania, but what it does have is diverse bird life.  With over 2,300 bird species residing in all of Africa, almost 1,400 can be found in East Africa alone and a little over 1,000 of them can be found in Uganda.  Since Katie loves birds so much, we decided to take a trip out to Semuliki National Park which is part of the Rift Valley and borders the Congo.  This makes it extra unique as you get some Central and East African animal and bird residents.

The drive to Semuliki was nice right up until you got to the entrance of the park.  The road then abruptly turned from a nicely paved road into the rocky surface of the moon.  We have driven on bad roads before, but this was ridiculous.  There were times where the best option was to drive almost completely sideways since the alternative would be to go through extremely deep potholes.  Speaking of potholes, some of them were actually full-on holes in the ground that I’m pretty sure went to wherever the other side of the world is.  Even though we drove really slowly, we still did some damage to our car which had to get fixed once we got home.

Sunset as we drove through the Toro-Semliki Wildlife Reserve.

We finally arrived at our place for the night and it should be mentioned that we decided to try our luck with the cheap Uganda Wildlife Authority bandas again because the alternative hotels cost something like $300 per person per night!  The hotels can also only be found in the Toro-Semliki Wildlife Reserve as there isn’t anything remotely close to the National Park.  Even the hotels in the reserve are a good 1 ½ plus hours’ drive away.  The bandas were again really crappy worse than a hole in the wall rooms (remember ourlovely stay in the bandas in Ishasha), but it would all be ok if we got to see tons of birds the next day.

We didn’t.  Since we were already in the Wildlife Reserve and the National Park was so far away, we decided to try our luck there the first day.  The first thing we noticed was there were only 3 main trails and most of the land was burnt like a brush fire had come through.  We later learned that the park guides purposely did this to help with plant growth, but for us, it meant not such great views.  It also meant that many of the animals were in other places because there was nothing around for them to eat (or hide).  We searched hard on our drives but could only find a few primates, antelope-like animals, and some birds (most of which we had already seen).  For all our pictures from this trip, please check out our SmugMug page.

Sunrise over Lake Albert in the Toro-Semliki Wildlife Reserve.

Maybe they're all checking out the skull?

We were told that the grass was burnt to help it regrow better.

Red-cheeked Cordon-bleu.

African Cape Buffalo with some friends.

For lunch, we stopped at one of the expensive hotels to get a bite to eat.  We were told that no one else was staying at the hotel, so we had the place to ourselves (we later learned there was no one staying at the other hotel either so we were literally the only people other than workers in the entire park).  The waiter took our simple order; a pizza and a cheeseburger, and then came back a few moments later to ask us if we knew the price of what we ordered.  Kind of an odd question, but we said no as they hadn’t provided us a menu and just told us what they had.  Our two meals would have cost us $60!  We argued about the price as we figured that they were trying to get as much money as they could out of us, but they wouldn’t budge.  Not looking to get fleeced, we got up and left.  For some reason, some places in Uganda charge extremely high prices for no reason.  Sometimes, as an East African resident, you can get a small discount, but the price from a Ugandan to an East African resident to a tourist is extremely drastic.  Our guess is that they don’t get a lot of business, so they raise their prices, but they get even less business because their prices are so high and unreasonable!

After a disappointing game drive, and lack of lunch, we headed back to the bandas to relax by Lake Albert and have a drink.  One of the interesting things that we did get to do this trip was watch the first ever Uganda presidential debates with a group of Ugandans.  Katie and I know a little bit about Ugandan politics and wanted to watch the debates not only to see what was going on with the presidential candidates but to also see how the Ugandans would react to the first televised debates attended by the 30-year incumbent, President Museveni.  This was the second round of debates; President Museveni didn’t show up to the first because he supposedly thought he didn’t have to.  At one point we laughed at one of the many very wrong things Museveni said, to which the Ugandans said to each other something along the lines of, “Look, even the Americans are laughing at that.”  It was a much different experience than the American presidential debates and hopefully something that will continue in the future for Ugandan politics.

Boats on Lake Albert.

Warthogs that hung out around the bandas.

Our next morning we got up early to head over to the actual National Park so we could try our luck at bird watching there.  The park is said to have almost 450 different species with numerous rarities including 46 Guinea-Congo biome species found nowhere else in East Africa, another 35 that can be seen in only two or three other places in Uganda, and five species which are endemic to the Albertine Rift ecosystem.  Since it is best to view the birds in the morning before the heat of the day we were out before 7:00 AM.  After our luck at the Reserve, we should have known this would have been a TIFA (This is F'ing Africa) moment.  We arrived at the National Park headquarters to be greeted by no one.  Literally, there was not a single person in sight as we walked around the building calling out.  We then called the numerous phone numbers they had listed – nothing.  Finally, we got a hold of the guide who checked us in at the Reserve who seemed very confused when we said no one was there and no one was answering our calls.  After a while longer, a truckload of rangers showed up and we put together a plan which included driving much further down the road to meet another guide to do our hike.  By the time we got to the location, he emerged from deep within the forest and then bought some snacks and drinks before taking us on our hike it was pushing 11:30 AM, it was hot, and there were no sounds of birds.  He basically then told us there were no birds in the forest and we should have come in the morning (we were at headquarters before 9:00 AM) and that we should just do a nature walk to the Sempaya Hot Springs back at the headquarters.  Not happy!

The trail for the hike with a distinct lack of birds.

The female hot spring by the headquarter.

A beautiful view of the hills bordering the Congo.

We did the hike which was fine, but to say we were disappointed is an understatement.  Out of all the National Parks we’ve been to in Uganda, this was by far the worst experience we had.  Katie was so excited for the potential to see new birds and go to this park and it ended up just being one major letdown.  We would not recommend this park to anyone visiting Uganda considering you can go to Queen Elizabeth and even Murchison Falls and see a much larger variety of bird plus way more wildlife.  It’s unfortunate because this park could have had so much potential.