Chimpanzee Forest Lodge sits between 2 world heritage sites of
Rwenzori Mountain and Kibale Impenetrable National Park. Her unique
location gives her the edge over competition and affords her something
worthy to blog about on matters of travel and conservation adventure.
Kibale Forest National Park
The 795-sq-km Kibale National Park is a lush tropical rainforest, believed to have
the highest density of primates in Africa. It’s most famous for being one of the
best places in the world to track wild chimpanzees, with five groups habituated
to human contact. It’s home to 13 primate species, with the rare red colobus and
L’Hoest’s monkeys the other highlights.
Larger but rarely seen residents include bushbucks, sitatungas, buffaloes, leop-
ards and quite a few forest elephants. There are also an incredible 250 species of
butterfly that live here. While on the smaller side, Kibale also has a great bird list
with 372 species.
The park visitor centre is at Kanyanchu, 35km southeast of Fort Portal.
Rwenzori Mountains National Park
The legendary, mist-covered Rwenzori Mountains were named a World Heritage
Site by Unesco in 1994 because of both their beauty and biodiversity. It’s the
tallest mountain range in Africa and several of the peaks are permanently covered
by ice and glaciers. The range, which isn’t volcanic, stretches for about 110km by
50km wide and is a haven for an extraordinary number of rare plants and animals,
and new examples of both are still being discovered.
Rwenzori Mountains are presumed to be the Mountains of the Moon, described in
AD 350 by Ptolemy, who proclaimed them to be the source of the Nile River. The
three highest peaks in the range are Margherita (5109m), Alexandria (5083m) and
Albert (5087m), all on Mt Stanley, the third-highest mountain in Africa. Two mam-
mals are endemic to the range, the Rwenzori climbing mouse and the Rwenzori
red duiker, as are 19 of the 241 known bird species. There’s thick tropical rainforest
on the lower slopes transitioning to the bizarre afro-alpine moorland on higher
reaches.
Uganda, dubbed the ‘Pearl of Africa’ and ‘Gifted by Nature,’ has an exceptional variety of landscapes, ranging from arid savannas to lakes, swamps, Rivers, tropical forests, and high mountains. Its unique topography in the west derived from great earth movements that faulted the earth’s crust to create the Albertine rift valley and the fabled Mountains of the moon ‘the Ruwenzori’s. The intense volcanic activity created Mt Elgon in the east, the Virunga’s in the southwest, and the crater lakes around Fort Portal and Kasese that genuinely make the country a tourist destination in Africa.
Uganda is at the intersection of different vegetation types that take different styles found in central, southern, and eastern Africa. Here, the Acacia woodlands of the east meet the forests of the West African countries; forest species blend with savanna species, further increasing the diversity of life. Furthermore, some exceptional biological paradoxes, such as Giraffes, are not found south of the Nile in Murchison Falls National Park. Just as the Burchell’s Zebra, located in Lake Mburo, but have never been recorded in Queen Elizabeth National Park just a short distance to the west.
The combined impacts of climatic history and geological past have thus formed a country of great diversity and natural wonders, where tourists interested in wildlife viewing safaris to Africa and scenery will be captivated. These attractions may be viewed to an even more significant effect from the many lakes and waterways, from Lake Edward in the East to Lake Victoria, which dominates southern Uganda. In the wetland, the visitors can observe the rare shoe bill. Uganda is also the source of the Nile, an immense river winding through farmland, forest, and savanna from south to north of Uganda, ending its journey in Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.