On our visit to Uganda we contacted a local Uganda car rental agency offering private fleets for self drive holidays and we started visiting Queen Elizabeth National Park and on reaching the park we went straight to the headquarters for acknowledgement and to receive guide who could lead us to Ishasha plains where we had to do a game drive and also seeing the tree climbing lions, these were too tactical as they amazed us on how they climbed the huge and fig trees to have a rest up in the tree branches. We did this under a tight security from the rangers since lions are some unfriendly to people most especially when they become suspicious.
Around this park, we slept at hotel Hippo Hill Lodge and we based here to tour Lake Katwe which is a salt extraction lake, Mweya peninsula and the Kyambura gorge which are the major tourist attractions within this park. The seventh day, we traveled to Kibale Forest national park which is adjacent to Queen Elizabeth National Park for chimpanzee habituation, we bought a chimpanzee permit at $220 per person. Since this required us a full day, we couldn’t make it on that day instead we staged at Primate Lodge Kibale a Uganda Wildlife Concession within the park.
The eight day we went to the park for guidance and at this time we woke up very early in the morning which enabled us to find chimpanzees before they had gone for food searching. Here we got a chance of feeding chimpanzees and even. The ninth day we traveled to Semliki National park which is located on Uganda – DRC Congo border in western Uganda near Rwenzori mountain national park. Here we went to the park station for briefing and also to obtain guides for leadership. We went to the Sempaya hot spring both the male and the female one, which releases hot water up with the steam through their vents. Deep in the forest are the Red tailed monkeys, Grey-cheeked mangabeys and black and white monkeys. As we were returning back to we also watched the highly valued Uganda Kobs that were walking in stock/herds. That very day we went to Rwenzori mountain National park.
Here we slept at Ruboni Community Camp, on the tenth day; we went to the park for cultural encounters with the Bakonzo locals at Ruboni Community Camp who demonstrated to us their ways of preparing local beers, cuisines, black smith, traditional healers and story tales. And in the evening we enjoyed the traditional dance performance. The next day we went for mountain climbing, here we hired all the equipments from the Rwenzori Mountaineering Services.
We started our climbing activity from the Kilembe Trail via the southern slopes of mountain Rwenzori near the Kasese town and this gave us an opportunity to view the glacial lakes along the Nyamwamba Rift valley. As we were passing through the deep forests on the mountain, different glacial rivers were flowing from up of the Snow capped mountain down the slopes. Since we had hired porters, we didn’t get tired a lot, we carried our food. As we were ascending up, coldness started fortunately we had jackets.
This took us five days to reach the Margherita Peak since we camped on the designated points on the mountain slopes. Up on the peak it was massive due to the glaciers and the ice blocks plus cold weather as we were witnessing people doing ice skating on the flowing rivers. The next day we descended the peak as we were preparing for the climax of our self drive tours in Uganda; on the eighteenth day we were already down the mountain at the park headquarters for departure and also to have a rest at Trekkers Hotel.
On the nineteenth we drove back to Kampala and this took us 6hours from Kasese to Kampala, here we had an overnight at hotel Africana and the next day early in the morning we traveled to Entebbe to catch up with our flight and this is where we even handed in the car to 4×4 Car Hire Uganda worker plus all the equipment and tools that were given to us as spare parts which facilitated our journey. Fortunately the car was mechanically well and we didn’t get any fault from it.
