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!!!