Entebbe Botanical Gardens - Part II

The morning started out nicely as I arrived at the entrance to the gardens, but within 15 minutes the skies to the south turned black and I was soon standing in a makeshift shelter along with 8-9 local fishermen as rain fell for almost 2 straight hours. By 9:00 the skies had cleared and I was able to get in a few good hours of birding. Only one lifer (Orange Weaver), but ticked off 6 new birds for the year, including Water Thick-Knee, Grey Parrot, African Crake, Wood Sandpiper, and White-Throated Bee-Eater. It was then back to Entebbe Backpackers to watch back-to-back English Premier League matches, including Man U's loss to Swansea.

Travelling to Kampala

Is it only in Africa where a 20-mile bus ride can take 2 hours? After a full morning of birding around Entebbe’s botanical gardens, I headed back to Entebbe Backpackers to pack and shower before heading off to meet Gen in Kampala. As expected, I paid for 2 seats due to the over-humungous size of my backpack…not a problem. I knew the distance was not great and was warned that it might take 1.5 hours to get to the capital because of traffic. After picking up and dropping off en-route what seemed to have been the entire population of Entebbe, the driver finally pulled over and said that that was the end and we should get out. Having spent close to 30 minutes to travel the final half mile, I planned on walking several blocks north with my bags to get on the north side of Kampala’s center to get past what had to be the worst traffic jam in the history of traffic jams, but instead I chose NOT to follow my own advice and took the first boda-boda that I saw. This, after figuring that there was absolutely NO WAY that a Ugandan motorcycle driver would be able to take not only my weight, but the 60+ pounds of weight that was in my 2 backpacks. He assured me that it would not be a problem and after negotiating a price of 5,000 Shillings (approximately $1.20), we were on our way. Two seconds into the journey I realized that the 2-3 mile journey to the Kolping Hotel would not be a quick one. Words cannot describe the traffic jam that we found ourselves in. With no traffic signals, stop signs, nor care for road rules, the streets of central Kampala were literally lacking in a foot of clear and empty space between any two vehicles and/or pedestrians…all of which chose their own routes to traverse the city. After the first 20 minutes we had traveled less than one full block and the thought of my knees being shattered by oncoming traffic made me rethink traveling on these death traps. Thirty minutes into the journey my driver, who had been sandwiched between the handlebars and my massive pack had suddenly dismounted and said something to the like of “We must now walk”. We pushed the moto, with the backpack balancing on the bike’s seat, through traffic and eventually to a gas station another half block away. We had run out of gas!! No big worries. We filled up and were off once again, weaving and dodging foot traffic, trucks, buses, and other boda-bodas. We were suddenly free of the jam and sped at an alarming rate down Bombo Street. It soon became apparent that my chauffeur did not know of the Kolping Hotel and on two occasions stopped and asked for directions. Almost one hour after starting the journey I could see the Kolping Hotel sign. One hour to travel what had to be no more that 2.5 miles!! Feeling bad for the driver, I gave him a few thousand extra Shillings, shook his hand, and headed inside to check in at reception. Gen had not yet arrived back from her site visit to Arua and I patiently waited in the lobby, all the while enjoying a refreshing glass of passion fruit juice that the receptionist gave me. Not 10 minutes into my wait and I could hear Gen’s voice coming from the parking lot area. After almost a month separated, we were together once again!

Entebbe Botanical Gardens

After a relatively peaceful and comfortable night camping on the front lawn of the hostel, I caught a boda-boda (motorcycle w/driver that is used for getting around town…and Uganda’s most common form of public transportation) to the Entebbe Botanical Garden for a morning of birding. I paid the driver and as I approached the entrance, I read the garden’s sign that said the opening time was 9:00. This seemed bizarre, as I know the gardens are a popular birding site and 9 o’clock seemed very late to begin birding. The gate was open, so I decided to walk in, even though it was only 8am. I immediately saw a guy who told me to just go in and that I could pay the entrance later.

I ended up spending about 4 hours in the park. Birding was great with stuff popping up all around me. The best birding was down on the shores of Lake Victoria where, by the end of the morning, I had tallied a total of 66 species, including 8 “lifers” (species I had never seen or had overlooked and not recorded). Among the 8 lifers were Red-Headed Lovebird, Angola Swallow and Northern Brown-Throated Weaver (two birds I had undoubtedly overlooked in previous outings throughout Africa), Slender-Billed Weaver, Golden-Backed Weaver, Weyns’s Weaver, Black-Crowned Waxbill, and Western Citril. Most, if not all of the other 50+ species were all familiar to me, and while they were not new birds, it was great to see them after a nearly 7 year absence from the continent!

Getting to Entebbe

The flight from Copenhagen was long, yet painless. After spending my last few hours walking around the beautiful city of Copenhagen, I headed to the train station and caught a train out to the airport. After nearly an hour of arranging and rearranging my baggage to avoid paying excess baggage fees, I checked in and away I went. The first leg of the journey took me to Amsterdam and after a 1.5-hour flight and 2-hour layover, I was off to Dubai. Six hours later we were in what seemed to be the absolute middle of nowhere on Earth. The desert surrounding the city was vast and I never saw anything that resembled civilization outside the area of the seemingly biggest airport in the world. Gen and I had been to Dubai’s airport once before on our way home from Zambia and I remembered it to be first class. This time, however, things were not quite the same. After a very long walk from our gate the passengers from Etihad’s Amsterdam flight converged with hundreds of passengers from what seemed to be several other arriving flights. Herded like cattle through transit/immigration, I made it to my connecting flight to Entebbe with fifteen minutes to spare. We boarded a transport bus that drove us what seemed to be at least 2-3 miles to our plane. As we exited the bus, we were hit by a heat that reminded me of Las Vegas at noon on any given day in the month of July. The thermometer on the screen at my seat read 114 degrees for the outside temperature, and it was only 8 o’clock in the morning! The flight to Entebbe was around 5 hours, but the time seemed to pass by quickly as I spent the entire flight talking to the guys sitting next to me. One guy was headed to Uganda with a group of students from England who would spend a month in Mbale doing a cultural visit. The other guy was from Spain and he was going to visit his girlfriend who had been volunteering outside of Kampala for a few months. The most memorable part of the flight to Entebbe was seeing the landscapes change from brown desert of northwestern Kenya to lush green hills as we entered Uganda. The change was abrupt and I could actually see a north-south line dividing the two countries.

We arrived at Entebbe’s airport around 1:00 pm, disembarked, and joined the line for immigration. On the flight over I had learned that Uganda had increased the cost of their visas from $50 to $100 and I was happy that I had opted to send my passport to the Ugandan embassy in Washington prior to traveling, thus saving me $50 bucks! My fellow row mates were not so fortunately and had to fork out the extra money to enter the country. In line I met a Filipina from Cebu (they’re everywhere!!) and practiced (butchered) my long-forgotten Visayan. She lives in South Korea where she teaches English along with her Ugandan-born husband. She was there to meet her in-laws who, after having been married for 5 years, she had still not yet met.

I breezed through both immigration and customs, got some cash from the ATM, and then scanned the mob of people outside the airport for Billy Mambo. Gen came into contact with Billy through some people in San Francisco and after exchanging a few e-mails, he offered to pick me up at the airport. I was not 100% sure he’d be there as I had written to him a few days earlier to tell him not to bother as I had planned to spend the night in Entebbe and it would be a waste of time for him to travel so far out of his way just to escort me a couple miles to where I was staying. Ten minutes, and a thousand offers to drive me into town later, I saw the Spanish guy from the plane with his girlfriend and asked them how they were getting to Kampala. We shared a taxi into Entebbe where they were dropped off on the side of the road where they could hail a passing “matatu” (minibus used as public transportation) and I was taken to Entebbe Backpackers where I would spend the night.