Week 12 - "The pearl of Africa"

The title is a quote from Winston Churchill who visited the country in 1910. After a week here I think he had a point even though it's always hard to choose a favorite or best out of many diverse, interesting and enjoyable places I have visited,

What Uganda most definitely has going for it is is scenery - in the south long flowing hills covered in tea plantations or terraced beautifully with crops from base to peak, in the centre it moves to mile after mile of  cane fields in the cultivated areas or savannahs grassland where it is wilder. All this dotted with some stunningly beautiful lakes, many formed in the body of extinct volcanoes. So with those thoughts it is mainly pictures this week.

Doing it tough at another lakeside campsite 

Hotel Masini - Uganda oldest hotel (1923) - a bit of colonial era luxury for one night. 

Lots of dirt roads ridden this week

There is a presidential election due in 2 weeks and I keep running into campaign rallies  (and because it's always a volatile time I aim to be out of the countrybefore it occurs)

The first highlight of the week was crossing the equator - for me the first time I've done it at ground level. (For me a bit of good kama came into play, a few moments before arriving here I had stopped to give a local motorcyclist a couple of litres of fuel, so in return he was more than willing to be flagged down to take this photo).

One down - two more to go (I cross back to the southern hemisphere when I enter Kenya before making the final crossing to the northern as I had to Ethiopia).

Another highlight from the week has been visiting Murchison Falls National Park. One of its main attractions is the opportunity to visit chimpanzees which turned out to be a great fun experience - on the hour you are alloted with the troop I saw the full range of them eating, sleeping, swinging in the trees, even copulating (as the guide discreetly put it). I also was especially lucky to see them hunting monkeys, one group high in the trees trying to drive them downward and another on the ground ready to catch and kill them - apparently chimps like to supplement their mainly fruit diet with some meat - this chase ultimately was unsuccessful and the monkeys got away. Not the easiest animals to photograph but here are a couple:

Not just chimps in the park - plenty of other animals too :

At one point there were 14 giraffes looking at me looking at them

And of course the falls after which the park gets its name. Not the tallest falls, but very dramatic as the whole of the Victoria Nile, not a small river,  forces itself through a 6 metre wide gap. Apparently described as the "most dramatic sight on the whole of the Niles 6000 mile journey north" (but this time I can't remember by whom)

Not the most spectacular photos - its one of those you need to be there places