UGANDA 2025: NGAMBA ISLAND CHIMPANZEE SANCTUARY

 July 19, 2025

After our trip to Mabamba Swamp, we returned to the lodge for lunch and then split up for our afternoon activities. Bob's plan was to spend the rest of the day birding on the property with Wilson as his guide, and Ella and I had booked a trip to Chimpanzee Island. To get there, we had to drive all the way back to Lake Victoria, take the motorized canoe across the finger of the lake to Entebbe, take another drive through Entebbe to another part of the lake, then take a 45-minute speedboat ride to the island. 

For what it looks like to drive through Entebbe, see this video I took from the back seat of the car. It is almost as interesting to watch the driver's video screen as it is to watch the street!

Before our final segment (the speedboat ride to the island), we had to wait over an hour for another large group of 19 people to arrive, which made all the rushing we had done to get to the dock pointless. However, we were at least waiting in a nice resort. Ella spotted a red-headed Finch's agama basking on one of the concrete squares. It looks like it had an unpleasant encounter with someone or something and lost part of its tail:

Photo by Ella

The group of 19 that joined us was an American mission group that was in Uganda doing spine surgeries. They were friendly and fun, and on our way over to the island we were all singing along to Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" and other songs from the 70s. I included a map of Lake Victoria just to show how large the lake is. Uganda is the upper left portion, Kenya to its right, and Tanzania below.

ECUADOR, GALAPAGOS ISLANDS: CROSSING THE EQUATOR

 March 24, 2022, Late afternoon and evening

The first time Bob and I crossed the equator was in 2009 when we flew over it on our way to Peru. The first time we crossed the equator at ground level was on our trip to Kenya in 2014. We crossed the equator by air several more times before this trip, and we crossed it on foot and by car in Quito, but our trip to the Galapagos was the first time we crossed the equator on the water.

We were not quite prepared for what it means to cross the equator on a boat.

First, we all gathered in the wheelhouse with the captain to take a look at the instruments that indicated exactly where we were on the earth's surface.

Somewhere out there was the equator, but we couldn't see it.

In days past, a sextant was used to determine latitude, but these days a sophisticated, digital instrument panel makes it much easier. We all crowded in and got our cameras ready to take a picture of the GPS display when we crossed the equator.

The equator is at 0*00.000, but I missed it by .003. (We were traveling south to north, so this is just after crossing.)

ECUADOR: QUITO-IN-A-DAY

 March 21, 2022

Quito is the capital and largest city in Ecuador. Situated in a valley in the Andean foothills at 9,350 feet, it is the second-highest capital city in the world (La Paz, Bolivia, sits at 11,942 feet) and the capital city closest to the equator. It is the only capital city next to an active volcano, Pichinca, which stands at 15,728 feet. Its last major eruption was in 1660, but it did puff a fair amount of ash onto Quito in 1999. Quito has, however, had a significant number of large-magnitude earthquakes in the last 100 or so years, including two that were stronger than 8.0 in magnitude: 8.8 in 1906, 8.2 in 1979, and nine stronger than 7.0 since 1942. Yikes.

Founded by the Spanish in 1534 on the ruins of an Inca city, Quito proper covers 143 square miles and has a population of 2.8 million, and we had about ten hours to see it all.

In the morning we met up with Terry and Geneil and enjoyed an upgraded breakfast on the "club floor" with them, (Remember, Terry had been upgraded because it was his birthday.)

Beautiful flowers--of course--and passion fruit.

Afterwards we gathered in the lobby with the other two couples who were joining our group, Brian and Renee Bascom and Ward and Norma Robinson, who had arrived in Quito in the last day or so.

A guide and driver picked up the eight of us and we were on the road by 9:00 AM. Our first stop was the Itanim Middle of the World Museum.

Here we all are!

AFRICA: CROSSING THE LINE (THE EQUATOR LINE, THAT IS) IN KENYA

Note starting and ending points above. Nanyuki is on the equator.

On our drive from Mountain Lodge at Mount Kenya to our next lodge, we passed up this wonderful opportunity for what I am sure was a less expensive place to spend the night. We saw a lot of little "hotels" like this one alongside the main road:

One of the many perks of this trip was that as we drove, there was always something interesting to look at. For example, this woman's odd assortment of clothing was intriguing, as was the green pitcher she held up near her head and the plastic barrel on her back. What would it be like to haul water for daily washing, cooking, and drinking?

Our first stop was Nanyuki, a town of 32,000 situated near the equator. We didn't actually visit the town, which also hosts a British military base and was the location for the POW camp discussed in the previous post, but we did stop "to use the washroom" at 0° latitude, along with quite a few other tour groups. (Our Land Cruisers are the green ones.)