Chimp Tracking in Maramagambo Forest

TL;DR: chimpanzee tracking for 5 hours, then drove up to Kasese, awesome and rewarding day.


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This is a chimpanzee, sitting on a branch and taking a break from munching on fruits. The lighting was awkward to work with, but in retrospective I quite like its picturesque effect.

We spent 5 hours in Maramagambo Forest tracking these animals with a local guide. 5 hours well spent for sure. Not only were we trekking through beautiful rainforest, but it was thrilling and we caught glimpses of many other monkeys. There was the guide, a funny Japanese tourist, his awkward reggae-loving Tanzanian friend Ramadan, Kris and myself.
The best part of this was that we were tracking totally wild chimpanzees, not habituated ones like most tourists go to see. So it was a lot more thrilling and exciting when we managed to follow trails to find two of them on the ground. One of the clues was actually a small monkey with its head ripped off, who knew chimpanzees were carnivores? As we found the two chimpanzees, they immediately started running off, and so started a wild chase for 10 minutes through the bush. We finally lost them, and were ready to give up, until we heard their characteristic cry. We followed it to find this guy in the photo jumping around the branches feeding, calling out to his friends. We observed him for ages, I was in awe by how humanoid they are.

After that experience, we headed out of the forest, passing by a tea plantation and back on to the road where Jeffrey was waiting for us. We thanked the guide and our two international friends hitched a ride with us and Jeffrey up to Kasese, the local town. We passed by the Equator on the way, and of course had to take a photo. Note from the future: according to Colin, the Equator was actually 500m off from where we were, classic Colin.


We made it to peaceful Kasese in the early afternoon and chilled there for the rest of the day, preparing the next part of our trip: the Rwenzori mountain range!