Showcasing the beauty of Mother Nature
I could have shared any number of photos taken along the river near my old home, with lovely sunrises and mountains… but this spoke to me more. I recently took a bird watching trip along the Kazinga channel in Uganda, and this village was at the turn around point for the tour. For a photo challenge topic of water, a photo shot from the water, of a village that completely relies on the water, seemed fitting.
Here’s a blog post that hits two of the WPC photo challenge topics at once. When I read the description for the edge challenge, I knew that some of the shots I took while flying between camps in Kenya would be a great choice to share. But being on those planes ties so well into the topic of nostalgia for me. Being in a small plane (especially up front) takes me right back to being a kid, heading up with my Dad in a two or four seater plane, and flying around either sightseeing, or heading to my Grandparent’s cottage. Great memories and such fun times 🙂
If I had a scorecard for successful trekking experiences in Uganda, it would look something like this:
Gorillas treks 2/2
Chimpanzee treks 1/2
Now by successful, I am only meaning that I saw the animal that I intended to when setting out for the trek. We could define successful in lots of ways though: if success meant coming back safe and having fun, I’d be 2/2 on both of them.
One trek felt like a quest more than the others, and that was the chimpanzee trek through the Kyambura Gorge in Uganda. You see, with gorilla trekking, trackers go out long before guests to try and find the animals in advance, so you don’t spend loads of time wandering, and the success rate of seeing the gorillas is quite high. There are no trackers that go out ahead of time for chimpanzee treks, and in Kyambura Gorge, the success rate for seeing chimps is somewhere between 50-60%.
Several times I had contemplated giving the gorge trek a miss, as I was worried about the physicality of it, but decided to give it a go anyways. The gorge itself is around 150m deep, has a river running through it (with hippos) and the pathways along are often steep, muddy and slippery. On more than one occasion, rather than fall over, I sat down at the top of a hill and slid down the muddy path on my butt!
After the initial decent into the gorge, we crossed a very nice, sturdy bridge over the river to look for the chimps along the other side. And as we walked along the paths, up and down hills, through streams and over fallen trees, we passed several more bridges. But when our guide declared it was time to return since the chimps weren’t in the area, we were a good two kilometres from the nearest bridge, and so instead, we had to cross the river by crawling along a fallen tree!
Crossing on the tree wasn’t actually that bad, it was wide and sturdy, and while the bark bruised my knees terribly, I wasn’t scared I was going to slip and fall. But then I reached the other side and learned that to get off the fallen tree, I would have to stand up, bear hug a big branch, and take a step of faith to another tree lower down that was further away than my legs could easily reach… and then finally jump to the riverbank below. I wish I had photos of all that but even my GoPro was safely packed away in my bag. I was terrified taking the leap of faith at the end of the tree, but very thankful for the other people in the group that helped me out and walked me through what I needed to do.
I saw chimpanzees the next day at Kibale Forest, but the Kyambura Gorge walk sticks out for me just as much. As one of my new friends said “You’ll always have a story to tell because of this!”
A trio of leopard shots for this Monochrome Monday.
You can find these, and lots of others here on my website. Your walls surely deserve an update with some new artwork – matte or glossy paper prints, traditional, stretched or thin wrap canvas and even prints on metal. Check it out!
I’m a bit behind on the weekly photo challenges, but I found some topics that interested me that were released while I was on holidays, so I am going to catch up on them over the next week or so.
I hope everyone has had a great weekend!
Every month the photo club I belong to has a photo topic of the month, as well as being able to submit a further 5 photos for review and discussion. Since all I have captured since I returned home are a few grainy images of one of the local deer (and lots of my dog) I thought I would share them here as well. I am hoping to get back into the swing of things with my “What I’ve seen this week” Sunday post very soon.
Until then, I hope you enjoy some images of Uganda and Kenya.
I’ve seen secretary birds on my past trips to Southern Africa, but it seemed that I always encountered them either in terrible light, or at such a far distance they were little more than specks (or both!). This past trip I was spoiled for choice, and saw them several times in Uganda, and every day while in Kenya. It was very interesting to watch them high-stepping through the grass, looking for prey.
The difference good light makes is amazing. The same camera and lens combo was used for both photos.
Happy Friday everyone!
