Touring around Bwindi Impenetrable Forest

Bwindi - dense rainforest home to the mountain gorillas

After a couple of days on our lake side resort, we were more then refreshed and ready for our next adventure. Today was kind of a filler day, we were able to wake up slowly and take our time at the breakfast table before meeting up with our driver guide for our final destination.  It was another beautiful sunny morning, and a perfect temperature.  Our drive took about 5 hours allowing us plenty of time to get settled into our new rainforest side banda overlooking the rolling hills of Bwindi.  We knew this was a special place the second we set foot on the grounds, not only were the surrouding stunning but the food was delicious and the staff were very kind.  We took them up on their offer to give us a tour of the surrounding village.  It was incredible how just how much the climate had changed from the "lake district" to the jungle region.  It was now very hot and sticky, not exactly a surprise considering its a rainforest, but we were only a few hundred KMs away from the lake region.

Ugandan long horned cow

We encountered many points of interest along our tour of this busy little community.  We started the tour with a nice walk along a meandering stream which led to a waterfall.  The only problem was in order to get to the water falls we would've had to cross the stream.  Since we had a full day of trekking the next day we decided it would not be wise to attempt this, especially after a couple of guys who were on the tour with us decided to attempt this cross and ended up knee deep in rushing water. It made for an entertaining moment, but surely it wasn't worth soaking their hiking boots to dip their head in the water.  Continuing the tour, our guide took us through tea and coffee plantations.  Because of the climate here they are able to harvest these crops a couple times a year bringing much needed income to this remote area. 

Coffee and Tea plantations

As we continued on through the village we came to an oddly placed hut in the middle of the forest.  We were informed this was where the shaman lived.  Unfortunately for us he was out at the moment (apparently he's quite the interesting character) so his wife gave us a run down of the various herbs they use to "cure" various ailments.  They have everything from simple pain killers and laxatives to "cures" for malaria and infertility.  Regardless of what we may or may not believe it was still intriguing to learn the strength of nature's healing ability.  To think these natural remedies have been in use for thousands of years is truely inspiring.

Banana Gin Distillers



Rippening Bananas

 Ironically the next point of interest brought us to the local makers of Banana Gin.  This was also quite fascinating to see as well.  They had a very primitive system of distilling bananas into pure alcohol and I'm pretty sure there was a LOT of perfecting (ie. sampling) going on by these distillers. Next we came across a banana farmer who demonstrated to us methods of rippining bananas.  Apparently for bananas (and I suspect this to be the case for most fruit) they don't all rippen at the same time, they in fact rippen one at a time.  But in order to sell these bananas to the markets, there is a need to have large amounts of bananas which all become ripe at the same time....so they dig huge holes, through the bananas stem and all into the holes and cover them with layers and layers and layers of banana leaves. Not only is this how they rippen them but its also the way that they are able to ferment them for things such as banana wine, and for further process down the river by the Gin distillers.  It was pretty incredible to stand by these holes where you could literally feel the warmth from the slowly fermenting fruit! 

Not sure about this wine

It was here that we were given the opportunity to taste test this local delicacy (and if there was a way to write sarcasm, this would be the extreme sarcasm font).  Although we were all kind of hesitant to try their brews, we figured, well how bad could it be?  So the first beverage that was poured for us was the banana juice, now I distinctly heard him say banana JUICE however, our fellow tourist who was the lucky chap to try these concoctions first, took a small sip and say "mmm ok ok this must be the banana wine, I can definitely taste the alcohol".  And this pretty much summed up what was about to transpire...it was in fact just the juice but tasted absolutely horrible.  It tasted like something you had left in the baking hot sun for three weeks...ughh I was scared to even think about what the gin tasted like.  But onward with our taste test!! Next was the wine, the funniest thing was that we were all standing around in a circle watching the tour leader pour us a small glass of the stuff, we'd take a sip and kind of nod politely and pass it to the next person...and EVERYONE had the exact same reaction.  At this point I started thinking, maybe this is a form of entertainment for these locals, to trick us poor unsuspecting tourists into thinking these guys actually drink this stuff!  Next was the Gin, when he pulled out a bottle that was as translucent as water I began thinking the one girl in our group who claimed she didn't drink alcohol was the smartest of the lot.  Aside from the 95% alcohol I shot before doing the worlds most dangerous road in Bolivia, this was the most wretched, unbearable substance that's ever touched my lips!  But it made for good times as we all laughed and joked about what type of dire situation of boredom we'd all have to be in to even contemplate having a couple drinks of this stuff.  Oh well, clearly not for tourists!

The next stop was the Bwindi Watoto Primary School.  This portion of our tour was very inspiring, the school was built and funded entirely by volunteers.  The school was started by a couple of American volunteers who were travelling the area in the hopes of seeing the gorillas.  It was basically a 1 class school built from locally made bricks, and if I remember correctly had only a couple of teachers. The school was set up for orphans and children of very poor families in the region.  We weren't told this, but given its location I would assume a lot of men died in civil strife since we were quite close to both the Rwanda and Congo borders.  The hospital in the area was also set up on the same premise.  It was also built by volunteers through the donations of many people who lived abroad but had past through this area at some time in their lives.  Part of the tour was of course to show you what tourists dollars had accomplished and it was really nice to see the donation dollars making a real difference in the lives of these very poor people.  Before this hospital was built, the nearest one was over 400km on extremely rugged roads where most people's only method of transportation is a bicycle or maybe a motorcycle at best.  The main focus of the hospital isfor new borns and their mothers, and also for sick children, but they also do things like promote and give out free bug nets to the locals. This has had a dramatic affect in the incidents of malaria in this region. 

A Bwindi hoedown by the Batwa

The final portion of our tour took us to the top of a hill where the local Batwa people were to put on a show of music and dance.  On our way up the hill we got an understanding of how quickly rain can come.  One minute it was nice and sunny, the next it was extremely windy and we could see very dark clouds coming in from over the mountains.  Luckily it didn't rain to hard and the Batwa put on a good show for us. These people were probably the biggest losers when Uganda decided to make this region a national preserve in order to protect the gorillas. In being a preserve the government evicted all of these forest dwellers and forced them to intigrate into local communities.  The park was brought into existance relatively recently (1994) so all of the Batwa people there had been born and raised in the forest.  I could not even imagine having to deal with such an upheavle.

Batwa footstompin dance

We slowly made our own way back to our bandas where we bought a couple beer and watched the sunset behind the heavily forested hills...tomorrow we track gorillas!!!

R&R in the lake region

I don't know what it is, but in true Ryan fashion, I gave up writing in my journal after a major hike...this is now the 3rd time in a row that this has happened and I just realized this trend.  Thanks to my lovely wife (I knew I married you for a reason) I'll at least have another source other then my memory (annnnd maybe google)to go by...

After our extremely challenging hike into the Virungas we were more then ready for some relaxation at one of Southern Uganda's most popular lake, Lake Bunyoni. I had drank a ton of water and re-hydration salts in order to restore the fluids in my body after such an arduous trek. I also made sure to stretch before bed which might have been why I wasn't AS sore as Marlene.  The drive to Bunyoni was about 3 hours of winding terraced hillsides, once at the lake we could see why its been dubbed "the Switzerland of Africa".  As per Marlene its very beautiful but boring...and I suppose compared to all of our other experiences thus far, yes it is boring, but both needed and deserved.  We were staying at a western type resort (not wild west but western world) which had a combination of resort syle cabins and also options for tenting.  This was a very busy place especially since there were two buses full of Swedish tourists on an overland adventure.  When we arrived they seemed to have a monopoly on the best sunning areas (on the dock) but Marlene and I wormed our way in there when they weren't looking :)  We spent many hours on the dock and on the grass sunning and reading.  Marlene spent lots of time on the internet, I don't know if its because she missed the world back in Canada that much or if she was really that bored.  Either way it was very relaxing and a great place to recover. There were several tours that were available including a boat ride of the surrounding area, a canoe ride in a local canoe and also hiking tours, but we weren't really interested in the hiking at this point.  For today we were happy just laying around catching some sun.

View of our Resort on Bunyoni

One of the major drawbacks about this place is that a) the service is VERY slow and lacking and b) the food options are very limited.  Much like a few other places we've been to in Uganda so far, this resort had a HUGE menu with tons and tons of items...unfortunately they just seemed to be there for show and they didn't really have much aside from very simple things like pizza and pasta.  At one point all we wanted was a sandwich and were told they were "out of bread"!!! How can a resort hosting close to 100 people be out of bread completely?? No idea, I guess this is what Anne's friends meant by "Ugandan's are switched off for the most part".  At one point we had to find our driver Vincent and ask him to drive us into town to find somewhere to eat cause apparently somebody forgot to go shopping!  I don't know how this is possible and we were both very disappointed with this resort, the most troubling thing for these business owners is that we are not particularly demanding customers, but boy did they hear an earful from us! 

Marlene and the terraced hills of lake Bunyoni



The one tree of Punishment Island

The next day we engaged in a couple more activities (other then dock sitting!) and decided to go on a boat ride to see the lake.  This turned out to be something to help pass the time as there is really nothing too fantastic going on.  The view is spectacular and watching the locals come in via traditional canoe was interesting but the only landmark of any significance is one that most places would not want to known for.  Its a little place called "punishment island".  The idea was simple, the local people used to leave un-married pregnant women on the island to either die of hunger or to drown while trying to swim back to shore.  Although the island is not particularly far from the mainland in those days (and still to this day) it was rare for the locals to know how to swim.  The only other way they could survice was if an un-married felt he would not meet another woman, he would paddle out to the island in the middle of the night and snag himself a bride. Although this practice has been abandoned, apparently, it is still possible to find women who were picked up from punishment island today.  The island we were shown to be punishment island didn't seem like much more then a bunch of reeds clumped together, as in, it didn't seem like there was much solid land to stand on.



The boat ride didn't last too long, though it did last longer then our market visit that followed. The coolest thing about the market, by far, was watching all the locals bring in their goods by canoe.  Apparently a lot of these people spend all day paddling themselves to the market place in order to sell their goods.  This happens once a week.



The View of Lake Bunyoni from our Resort

Later that evening we decided to take a little paddle in a traditional canoe.  The plan was to paddle out of our little bay to watch the sun set.  Although we are both very adept at paddling regular canoes, unfortunately our experiences in the Canadian wild was little help paddling these hollowed out logs. These "canoes" were exactly that, a very large hollowed out tree, with no shape, making it nearly impossible to steer let alone balance!  There were quite a few near tips and I began to feel as though I couldn't even put my paddle in the water without risking an unwanted swim at dusk!  To make matters worse there were several people who had taken making entertainment out of watching people like us attempt to maoever their way out of the bay. We did finally get the hang of it (sort of) and managed to see a beautiful sunset in the process.

Although we enjoyed the rest and relaxation this lake provided we were also very excited to get moving the next morning...after all, we were going to see one of the most endangered species on the planet!

traditional canoe on lake Bunyoni