THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE

Wednesday

I went chimp trekking this morning and saw tons of chimps!!!! We really couldn’t have asked for a better experience. We walked down from our campsite to Ugandan Wildlife Authority head office at 7 in the morning. The trekkers were Lucy, Jess, Nicola S, Eileen, and I and we were all insanely excited but still worried we weren’t going to find them in the forest.

UWA staff driver then drove us to the forest where the trek was beginning, which meant another fun ride in the back of a truck on a very dusty African roads (really quite fun actually). We were the first of the tourists to arrive for the morning treks, so the five of us quickly and happily paid our $90.00 and departed with our guide quite quickly to get a head start on the rest.

Literally, as soon as we walked into the forest we heard all these chimpanzee calls and they all sounded extremely close. We walked maybe 20 steps farther into the forest and witnessed our first chimp, a high ranking male. He was on a boardwalk/trail section and he saw us and then slowly walked down the trail and we of course followed gitty with excitement. It’s absolutely amazing how easy chimps make it look trekking through the forest. The girls and I were getting tangled up in all the vines but we were so excited we didn’t let it slow us down.

The chimp then met up with some other chimp members, climbed a tree, and started to feed off the seeds from a palm tree. We happily started snapping photos (thank you Jess) and I filming video. The chimps just relaxed and ate and sometimes jumped from tree to tree (especially the younger ones we ran into). There was one chimp there that we were warned to watch out for as he was known to throw things at the visitors and aim his excrement. True to the guide’s words he tried both, but luckily missed!

After about 20 minutes of watching them there (and after other stupid tourists came in behind us…one actually quoted as seeing the chimp and asking “what animal is that”) the chimps decided to move and then quickly departed and we rushed to stay semi close behind. The chimps of course didn’t use the trail system so we followed suit and started running through the forest, hopping over branches and dodging the thorny vines. It was such a rush, I absolutely loved it!!!

The chimps then decided to cross one of the roads going through the forest and we lucked out to get a bit ahead of them so we could see them clearly cross the road. The guide seemed to really be getting into at this time as well, so as soon as the chimps passed he really started running up the hill and we followed suit and then cut back into the forest to try and catch the chimps walking through, and WE DID!
We then watched some more chimps relax and eat some food for quite some time, all the while smiling from ear to ear. After about an hour of visual contact with the chimps our guide informed us that it was all we were allowed to see in one day, which was alright as the chimps were starting to wander off again and we had to get back to the rest of the handshake group.

As we turned around to head back towards the entrance we saw a chimp laying right behind us on the path we had planned to take back just relaxing and looking at us. That being said, we got some more close up shots. He slowly got up and walked away, we said our good-byes (“laters”) and headed back to the head office.

I AM JUST SO HAPPY I don’t even know how to tell you what I am feeling right now. It was so amazing. This was the best experience of my life, I have been dreaming of this day since I was 11. I truly couldn’t ask for a better experience. SO HAPPY!!!
:)

Anyways, after we got back to the entrance the five of us sat at the café and had an omelet and some chapatti and talked about the amazing experience and of course a little gossip about the rest of the group that wasn’t there. Around 1, the truck showed up with the rest of the group to pick us up and take us to Julia Lloyd’s (primatologist) house. She actually graduated from Oxford Brookes University 2 years before me.

She has been living in Uganda for 12 years working for JGI and then Kibale Forest studying the habituation of chimpanzees in the forest. She seemed really nice and interesting so that was fun. She lives on top of a hill looking into Kibale Forest. Truly a dream come true for a primatologist living in Africa.
After that quick meeting (about an hour) we headed to the Wetlands to do a trek there. It was so hot and we were all so tired by this point, but as soon as we started trekking and running into FOUR monkey species we picked up our pace again. I can’t believe I saw so many different primates today. It was PERFECT!!!!!!! We saw red tail monkeys, red colobus, black and white colobus, and grey cheeked mangabey. WONDERFUL!!

This evening a lot of us ate dinner at the campsite restaurant. I did actually get my food tonight however I ended up getting charged more than everyone else who ordered the same thing! Honestly, what is my deal?

Would love to post this blog up tonight but the internet is down. David just trip over the satellite wire and it’s too dark to see how to realign the dish. So I guess I will go to bed instead and hope the net gets up and running tomorrow morning.

NIGHT!