First picture!

My very literate son has done an excellent job of describing our experiences thus far. Obviously, the one missing thing has been posting pictures. As this was the most important point of this blog, I am a bit frustrated. It is not for lack of trying. I am carrying several tons of technology with me. I have an iPhone, a digital Nikon SLR camera, an iPad with Bluetooth remote keyboard and too-numerous-to-count cables, batteries, microchips and microchip readers. I have hundreds of gigabytes of something.

Here are my excuses. At our first lodge there was dubious Internet access and certainly no Wi-Fi. Our second lodge (from where I am writing now) has Wi-Fi in the lobby but my iPad, which contains all my pictures, can't log on for some reason. I had the entire IT group at the lodge (Okay,two people) scratching their heads about it. Alex's laptop logs in just fine, thank goodness. We discovered that his laptop reads digital chips so we can download our pictures here. So, as you can see from this picture of "Crocodile Banzhaf", we are good to go. Unfortunately, our accomodations for the next four nights are permanent tent camps and Internet access may not up to snuff.

Here is my summary:

1. flight--- no sweat. All you need to make 24 hours of travel tolerable is an iPad, noise-cancelling headphones and season three of "30 Rock". I still have a few episodes to go.

2. The five hour car ride to Kibale Forest for chimp trekking was okay too. The roads in Uganda are excellent.

3. Ndali Lodge, our first accomodation, is my idea of heaven on earth. Perched on the narrow rim of an ancient volcano, the Lodge has 8 individual huts with no electricity, plenty of hot watera and views to die for. The place is owned by a young British guy, Aubrey, and his Ugandan wife, a Yale law graduate who gave up her corporate law practice in Manhattan to return to her homeland. Aubrey's grandfather bought the land long ago and then was kicked out by Idi Amin. They were invited back in the 1990s and created the lodge. The birding outside our our room was the best I have experienced in Africa (or anywhere else). The food was outstanding. There is a volcanic lake just below the lodge--they could not entirely endorse swimming in it for fear of the unlikely acquisition of a parasite. Alex and I went swimming. Best of all, they have four dogs all named after characters in "Faulty Towers". "Polly" slept in our room one night.

4. Chimp trekking in Kibale Forest was amazing- Alex has covered it.

5. We also went on a "swamp walk" in Kibale Forest. We saw 6 different species of primates in 3 hours (not including chimps, gorillas or baboons). Birding was outrageous. We saw a Great Blue Turaco--google it. It is basically a pale blue turkey with a black crest and a red and yellow beak.

5. We then drove to Myewa Lodge in Queen Elizabeth National Park. We are high on a hill that overlooks a natural channel between Lake Edward and Lake George, two of the Great Lakes of Central Africa. We took a three hour boat ride today and saw lots of elephants, cape buffalo, hippos and, of course, amazing birds. There are "pet" warthogs on the lodge grounds that remind Alex of our labradoodle, Carmen.

Tomorrow we leave at dawn for our second Chimp trek. We then continue on to the Ishasha Tented Camp for two nights. If there is Internet access, I promise I will post pictures. We have gorilla trekking awaiting us later in the week. The permit for Rwanda is secured but we have no guarantee of access in the Biwindi Impenetrable Forest here in Uganda. Somehow, I think we will make it happen.

WCB