Uganda 4th – 5th Feb

Our adventure starts with a very late night arrival (about 1am) at our Entebbe hotel. This really is a stop off hotel as we’re being collected by our driver/guide for the majority of our stay at 10 in the morning.

We debated long and hard about whether to simply drive ourselves around Uganda, or to go with a driver/guide, but ended up deciding on a guide simply because it was such an unknown quantity. On the one hand it would be an great way of getting immersed in the culture, or, on the other, it could increase our stress levels significantly 🙂

As it turned out we made the right decision. Frank (our guide) is fantastic. He’s very knowledgeable and on the first day, driving towards Bwindi Forest National Park (we stopped halfway at a fabulous lodge, see below), he spotted grey crowned crane (the national bird of Uganda), grey kestrel (which may end up being my first artwork, she looked wonderful sat on a huge cacti) zebra and impala, which has inspired my first sketch. To be fair, I think we would have spotted the impala and zebra, but would certainly have missed the crane and kestrel!

We arrived at a wonderful, community led, lodge. This meant that all of the money we paid went straight to the community, rather than going out to international individuals and companies, which is usually the case. I really wish there were more of these community set ups, they’re so good.

We had a great visit by some vervet monkeys as we were settling in