April 25, 2013

Queen Elizabeth National Park: North Section


It was a cloudy, overcast day when we left Kibale Forest NP to drive to Fort Portal and onto Queen Elizabeth via the Bigodi Wetlands, so we didn’t get to see the view from the famous ‘Top of the World’ viewpoint.

We drove into the Northern section of Queen Elizabeth via the crater view gate and what fantastic, absolutely beautiful scenery. Views across into Congo which is only 19km as the crow flies, views across the Albertine Rift into Lake George and not to mention the craters all around that were all heavily wooded, some with lakes some without. We saw a heard of about 70 eles but far off and bar baboons, we didn’t see a lot of game on our drive in.

One stunning viewpoint we pulled out the picnic, put the kettle on for tea and it had only just boiled when a troop of especially aggressive and very large baboons pulled up ... ready to attack and they really did mean business. So while I shouted and threw large rocks Chrissie packed up the car as quickly as she could and we drove 50m up the road and had tea on the roof of the car instead with all the juvenile baboons lined up like an audience watching us, while all the great big boys took over the viewpoint!

On our way into camp we followed a young male leopard for 15mins (no good pics im afraid) who was not worried about us at all and was scent marking his (new) territory. We camped at Wizards Landing on the Kazinga channel where the view was fabulous. Hippos could be heard all night.

We did the Kazinga Channel boat trip, drove looking for predators on the Kasenyi Plains (didn’t find any), whiled away an hour with a group of banded mongooses who picked all the insects from the mud on the bottom of the car and periodically crept close to us as we sat on the road watching them and we saw plenty of eles too.



















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