Gorilla Safari and Lake Mutanda

One of the best experiential tours in Uganda should be gorilla trekking, gorilla safaris are too interesting to track and watch due to their way of life and how they associate with one another in their groups. Before going for a gorilla safari, its advisable to make arrangements with local operators within Uganda to avoid embarrassment and shortages resulting from quick arrangements. On addition to gorilla tracking, Lake Mutanda which is an adjacent lake to Bwindi is ideal for honey moon holidays.

Uganda has got an approximation of about 480 mountain gorillas located in her two parks of Bwindi and Mgahinga with over fourteen gorilla groups distributed in the four sectors of Bwindi and one in Mgahinga. Both the parks and Lake Mutanda are located in the south west of Kampala and Uganda at large, though located deep away from Kampala, many visitors from different origins go for gorillas trekking in these parks.

Having partnered with nature adventure Africa safaris, we sent the entire amount that was required for a full trip and surprisingly it was too cheap since Moses an experienced tour guide gave us all the details with the budgets. We spent $5000 USD for a full trip and indeed it was so encouraging, and this proved me that every person can go for a safari depending on the budget one has.

This was a five day safari holiday, on our first day, we were picked from Entebbe and we had a rest at Protea Hotel for an overnight. On the second day, we went to Mgahinga national park via Kampala – Masaka – Kisoro road and this took us 8 hours to reach Kisoro, here we staged at Mucha hotel where we slept in preparation for our trek. The next day we went to the park headquarter from where we were briefed and after we were given guides who led us to the forest.

Mgahinga national park is one of the best tourism centers for gorilla trekking which gives a fascinating and scenic view of the nearby volcanoes with a number of wild animals including, elephants, bush bucks and the most endangered rare golden monkeys which are the mostly seen here only in Uganda. We spent four hours tracking; we had our snacks and drinking water since the activity in climbing mountains until we spotted the gorillas at around midday. We spent only one hour with the gorillas as we were enjoying their way of life within the forest. But it was too cold in the area to the extent that mist was the order of the day.

In the evening we went back to the hotel for an overnight and on the next fourth day we went to lake Mutanda for a holiday. Here we had a rest at Mutanda lake Resort where we enjoyed the Virunga volcanoes tower, gentle breezes, cool and yet sunny climate and the cool waters. We explored it using a canoe  which enabled us to see some of the islands around, full of birds and in the evening we went fishing.

This was so amazing to the extent that we had an overnight here smoking our fish we hooked, we never wanted to stop but time was the limiting factor, on the fifth day we had to go back to Entebbe for our organized departure at 9pm and thank God that we reached safely and at around 7pm we were already in Entebbe though tired due to the long journey we had, but this wasn’t the matter the fact is that we enjoyed the trip in Bwindi and lake Mutanda with Nature Adventure Africa.