Friday 1 June 2007

grillers

didnt realise how long it was since we last posted anything.Alice and Edward have been with us and things got a bit eventful. first off we went on a gorilla safari.about 450 of the worlds remaining mountain gorillas are in Bwindi impenetrable forest in the south west of Uganda and only 24 people a day are allowed to visit them.Its quite an event apart from the cost of the permits which is frightening enough ;you are also only 30k from the Congo border and their home grown rebels, so you trek with two or three armed guards as well as porters and guides.We went for two days the first to see the R or rushorosa group which tends to be nearer than the others,it was after passing the long drop toilet there they were about five minutes from the Uganda Wildlife Authority HQ.



We watched them amble around ignoring us for a good hour,it was just as well ,a lovely but not small lady from the Express was researching an article on Uganda and I doubt if she would have enjoyed the next day when we sought the H group.this took three and a half hours up two mountains and was seriously knackering.



The astonishing thing was watching the four hundred pound silverbacks totally ignoring us until Machati(the playful one) came alittle close and got admonished.apparently he likes cameras and will take them off to play with,although only five he weighs in at 180lbs and is as strong as at least three big men so not to be argued with.He mock charged us and then sort of studied us for several minutes until told off I think he was bored anyway by that time as we all hid our cameras except Ed who got a photo of him.



After that we went to South Africa for a few days with Des and Suzie and needing to 'follow that' as 'twere went Shark diving,all except Robert went in but he was seasick and spent the entire afternoon feeling lousy so forgot to take any photographs! We missed the Elgon cup and Uganda won 29-10 Kenya came second!Seems rather tame being back in Uganda but SA was very cold!Then nUganda beat Nigeria 2:1 in the Nations cup!