February 4 - March 12, 1997

Scott A. Yost

Safari means travel in Swahili. This is a record of my safari to East Africa in 1997. I visited Uganda and Tanzania to do some trekking in the mountainous areas, and to view wildlife. I hiked for a week in the Rwenzori Mountains, also known as the Mountains of the Moon, the source of the Nile on the Uganda-Congo border. I also climbed the highest peak there, the glaciated 16,700 foot Margherita. Afterward, I tracked mountain gorillas at Mgahinga National Park. I also viewed wildlife at other Ugandan parks, including Queen Elizabeth National Park. Then I went to Tanzania and climbed Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa at 19,340 feet. I viewed wildlife at the Serengeti, Ngorogoro Crater, and other Tanzanian parks, and finished with a few days on the coast in exotic Zanzibar.

It was a time of unrest in Uganda, which has known many such times. A lot of the problems originated in neighboring Zaire, which was soon to turn into the Democratic Republic of Congo via a civil war. The news reported bombings and other military activity just across the border. Trouble lingered from the aftermath of the genocide in neighboring Rwanda a few years earlier. The problems sometimes spilled over the border into Uganda. Shortly before my arrival, there had been an armed attack on Fort Portal, the gateway to the Rwenzori Mountains, prompting an increased military presence in the border areas. I saw plenty of soldiers, plenty of guns, and plenty of refugees. Fortunately, none of this affected my trip much, but we were careful to be off the road by dark. A year to the date after I was in Bwindi Forest, eight tourists and four Ugandans were killed by 150 attackers (reportedly members of the Interahamwe militia responsible for starting the genocide in Rwanda) at the same place I stayed. The Rwenzori mountains were closed to tourists for years after my trip, but this jewel of Africa has since reopened.

Still, western Uganda is strictly a destination for the adventurous. The universal attraction of the endangered mountain gorillas insures continued interest from tourists (perhaps too much), but no one should go there expecting a "walk in the park". The infrastructure remains very undeveloped relative to more common Kenyan or Tanzanian destinations. And if you go, keep in mind that there is much more than gorillas to experience.