Back to Entebbe
The return trip to Entebbe, with a quick stop-off to visit Ether in Kampala, is a long drive in hot weather with little to see apart from bad driving and scruffy roadside towns. We stop briefly by a couple of the swamps where Shoebill have been seen recently, but have no luck and probably not enough time to visit Mabamba Swamp for a proper look before we leave.
We return to Papyrus Guest House – where we spent our first night – to have dinner and a final night before our flight home. It's good to have dinner and a good night's rest in a somewhat familiar place. Our final day – flight doesn't leave until midnight – is spent around the town of Entebbe. In particular, we take a walk through the Botanical Gardens making a last-minute scan for additional birds. I finally get to see an African Grey Parrot in the wild. They're just something that I never managed to see before, despite several opportunities in different places. It is only because friends used to have one as a pet that I would even think of them as something worth looking for.
Soon enough, it is time to check our packing, load the car one last time and say our goodbyes to Emmy. With hopes of returning, we struggle through the airport and finally onto the plane for the long overnight flight back to Europe and the two additional flights that will bring me back to the Isle of Man just in time for the New Year.
Reflections
This trip has been an unusual one in many ways. We visited fewer places than last time, saw less and in many ways did less as well. Still, I somehow managed to feel more tired and less interested at times than I had done on any of my previous visits.
Maybe this is down to advancing years, maybe it is down to some of the reasons outlined earlier, maybe it was down to the itinerary or the altitude – who really knows what makes one enjoy a trip or not? A couple of days before the end of the trip, Chris and I were talking about the places we had been in Africa and what may be next. I felt at that time that I was done with Uganda – and possibly much of East Africa as a whole – but now I'm not so sure. The magnificent scenery at Lake Mulehe with the smoking crater of Nyiragongo in the distant Congo may be enough to make me change my mind and return again in the future.
As always, the company was excellent and the team worked well to keep each other motivated and as happy as we could. Emmy, driving and guiding for my third visit and more times than that for the others, was his usual excellent and professional self throughout. I really enjoyed my time at his Broadbill Forest Camp, despite the minor works and quirks that still need to be ironed out there. I'm going to help with some software solutions to make his life a little easier when he's on the road and trying to juggle management, bookings and driving all at the same time. He pushed us hard to find just one more bird at times, but that is, after all, his job and the reason we are using his services and paying him.
In the final analysis, I did have a good time. It was touch and go in the middle of the trip, but I found that it picked up towards the end with great locations, magnificent scenery and good wildlife. We saw more than 400 species of birds in less than four weeks and more than 20 mammals from tiny mongoose to big bull elephants and much in between.
I'm sure to be in Africa again in the not too distant future, whether Uganda or elsewhere. I'm still inexorably drawn to the wildlife, the scenery and the great people you can meet there.