Our original plan had been to have a full day in this park on our way out of Rwanda, but our flight difficulties made this impossible. Instead, leaving Rubondo early gives us a chance to see at least some of it. The Chato-side entrance to the park has nice new facilities and what looks like it will become a really good visitor centre. Sadly, it has no facility to take our money and this leads to an hour of back-and-forth while we sort out a way to pay it directly to Tanapa.
Once we have approval, the ranger on duty grabs his gun and offers to come with us on a drive through the park. He clearly hasn’t done so for a while and wants to check the track. The track is difficult – probably because it is so infrequently travelled – and the forest grows densely right up to the road. Viewing anything here is challenging, to say the least. Still, there were at least a few birds about that were worth the effort of trying to photograph.
Emmy was very surprised to see red colobus monkeys. We caught a brief glimpse of them as they scattered on our approach, but they were back in the same fruit-laden tree on our return about an hour later. I managed to get some pictures of them as they fled for the second time, but only of their retreating backs. An internet check does suggest a small population in Chato, but there is apparently uncertainty about which sub-species they belong to, or if they are another different one.
This visit to the park is the only real let-down caused by the chaos of our arrival. We should have had a full day to explore all that Bugiri-Chato has to offer, but have had to miss out on the considerably more open and wildlife-abundant part of this intriguing new park. I guess we will just have to come back again to give it a proper exploration.