East Africa Day 11 - Kampala

Our time in Tanzania has come to an end. It is hard to believe. These past few days have flown by. Alison and I were talking this morning and Tanzania greatly exceeded our expectations. This easily one of our top 5 favorite counties we have visited. 

Today is a travel day. We woke up and had a lazy morning. Around 9:30am Richard picked us up and drove us to the Kilimanjaro International airport. The drive took about an hour. We chatted the entire way. Over the course of this trip Richard became not just our guide, but a friend. 

The airport was fairly empty so we breezed through check in, security, and passport control. They did check our Covid tests 5 times. The paperwork we have is fine, but the testing process was a little sketchy. To get into Uganda you need to have a negative PCR test within 72 hours. Our tests were technically 75ish hours before our departure. When we realized that and talked to the tour company they told us not to worry. The documentation would show the test was performed on the 19th (date the sample was processed), rather than the 17th (date the sample was collected). We don’t have other options so we are rolling with it. 

After our experience Alison and I think everyone we know should go on safari in Tanzania. The experience blew us away. We talked about some of the things we learned and want to share them with our family and friends who are thinking about going on safari. 

1. Is Tanzania safe?

Yes, it is safe. Alison and I felt safe and comfortable the whole time we were here. Everyone we interacted with was friendly. We had no concerns about safety at any point in our trip. 

2. What currency do you use?

The official currency of Tanzania is the Tanzania schilling. Functionally, the purchasing power of the schilling is very poor. We used USD and everywhere we went that was the preferred currency. I do like to collect a little bit of local currency when we travel. Richard traded me 20,000 schilling for $10 USD. 

All of this being said we rarely if ever had to pull out a wallet. Our tour was mostly all inclusive. It included lodging, meals, water, soda (if we would have wanted it) and transportation. The only things we paid for in Tanzania were tips for the lodges and Richard, as well as a few small souvenirs. 

3. Is there internet and what is the power situation?

There is internet available at most of the lodges. However, it is often only available in the common areas (not in the rooms). It also isn’t particularly strong. We could access email, browse the internet, and access social media. We usually spent a few minutes each day catching up on email.

Alison had her phone connected to the wireless network. Tanzania is included in Verizon’s travel pass. For $10 a day you have access to data, voice, and text just like you would through your regular plan. The network was pretty spotty. She would get service when we were near a bigger city or town, but otherwise she had nothing. It was not worth it to pay for my phone to be connected to I kept my data turned off. 

Most lodges we stayed at had European plugs. There was one lodge that only had local plugs (type G). You should be prepared with an adaptor or two for the local power, but you may not need it. 

4. Are the lodges clean and comfortable?

All of the lodges were clean and comfortable. I mean sometimes the bed wasn’t the most comfortable, but it was always more than adequate. We have stayed in far worse accommodations in other countries. We were pleasantly surprised by the level of quality of the lodges. 

We booked mid-range accommodations. I don’t know if I would go with the lower range. It was important to Alison that we have a private bathroom. She didn’t really want to leave a tent in the middle of the night in the Serengeti to find a restroom. We enjoyed the mid-range accommodations. 

5. What do you eat on safari?

All the meals were included in the price of the safari. Our meals were fairly similar from day to day. 

We would start the day with breakfast at the lodge. Breakfast was typically a buffet. These buffets usually included pancakes or crepes, potatoes, fried bananas, bacon, sausage (more like hot dogs), toast, rolls or other bread. Sometimes there were eggs cooked to order. 

Every day we ate lunch on the go. The safari lodge would provide boxed lunches for Richard. Sometimes we ate these in designated picnic areas, but more often we ate them in our safari vehicle while watching animals. The boxed lunches typically included: a roasted chicken wing, a boiled egg, a fruit yogurt, a banana, a muffin, some type of small sandwich (either carrot and onion or cheese), a mango juice carton, crackers or cookies, and a chocolate bar. Sometimes it might also include a crepe (leftover from breakfast) or some pasta. The boxed lunches were fine. It wasn’t great food, but we were far from civilization during lunch and the food tasted fine and got us through the day. 

We ate dinner at the lodge. This was also a buffet. Usually it was a mix of some local dishes and European and American cuisine. It usually tasted pretty good and there were enough options we could find food we wanted to eat. Pretty much the highlight of every dinner was the soup. Every night they had a different type of soup with fresh bread. This was always delicious. 

I will note it is important to take food safety seriously on a trip to Tanzania (or any developing nation). Eating or drinking the wrong thing has devastating consequences that can really put a damper on your trip. Alison and I are very conservative in our food choices. We avoid all uncooked fruits and veggies. We can technically eat fruit if we peel it ourselves and I did eat one banana, but even then we normally don’t risk it. We do not drink juices (unless it is in a sealed container and/or pasteurized). We only drink bottled water. We also take 8 peptobismal tablets a day. Two with each meal and two before bed. It is a lot of peptobismal and it turns our tongues black, but it can decrease the risk of getting food poisoning by 70%. That is worth it.  

6. Are there bathrooms on the game drive?

This was a question we had before coming on safari. On our first day Richard asked us to give him advanced warning if we needed to use the washroom so he could head toward a washroom. 

Functionally, we would use the washroom at our hotel each morning. There would be a washroom at the gate to each National park. We would stop on our way in. Many of the National parks have picnic areas with washrooms. Most days we would stop by these washrooms once or twice throughout the day. However, there were times we were in remote areas far from any washroom. In these situations we would use the “bush bathroom” and go right behind the vehicle. Richard’s euphemism for this was “checking the tire pressure.” 

7. Is the safari vehicle comfortable? What about dust and bugs? 

Our safari vehicle was a Toyota Landcruiser. This the is safari vehicle of choice. Probably 99% of the the other safari vehicles we saw were also Toyota Landcruisers. It is a great safari vehicle. We drove it through all types of terrain and it had no issues. The seats were set up high, giving us a good vantage point out the window. There was also a cushion on the seat for our comfort. To see wildlife we would roll down the windows and we would pop the top. The roof of the vehicle popped up so we could stand up and observe our surroundings. This was nice because it also provided shade during the day. If it was too dusty or raining we could close up the vehicle easily. In the backseat there was a built in cooler full of cold beverages. We also had room to store our bags and equipment. 

We could close our vehicle completely to avoid dust and bugs. However, then you miss the wildlife. We only had one really dusty day and one day with a lot of bugs. When it got dusty we would adjust the windows to try to limit the dust. We kept the top popped anytime we were in the parks (unless it was raining). The Tsetse flies kept coming into our vehicle one day. There wasn’t much we could do, other than try to wave them out of the vehicle. When the Tsetse flies were really obnoxious Richard maneuvered us to another area of the park. 

8. Do I need to hire a tour company?

Absolutely yes. In theory you could rent a vehicle and try to get from park to park yourself. However, there did seem to be quite a bit of bureaucracy and I don’t know how you would navigate the permits by yourself. Even if you could get to the parks most of them have limited signage. There would be no way to know your way around without an experienced guide. Additionally, you would never find the most interesting animals without a guide. Richard would often pull off onto an obscure trail and tell us we might find a leopard in this area and sure enough we would. Or we would drive for miles through dusty savannah in search of lions and Richard would find them. 

A good guide is a combination of so many things: tracker, educator, navigator, driver, spotter, photographer, and more. Richard checked all of the boxes. He knew every bird and animal we saw and he would educate us about them. He had books full of birds and animals and he could turn right to the page of the animal or bird we saw. It was impressive. He also was so good at spotting things. He spotted an owl that was mostly obscured behind this leaves. We never would have seen that without Richard. He also would maneuver the vehicle to try to get a better angle or lighting for the camera. He is a real pro.   

9. How is going on safari during Covid?

Right now is a great time to go on safari. So much of the facilities - lodges and buildings in Tanzania are open air, which helps reduce the risk. Really our biggest risk is that Richard had Covid, but many of the people with jobs in tourism have been vaccinated, which also reduces the risk. 

It is sad for the people in these areas because tourism is way down. Richard told us that in normal high season there would be more than 1,000 safari vehicles full of tourists. There were quite a few safari vehicles, but it was plainly obvious things haven’t recovered yet. This was good for us because we saw fewer vehicles in the National parks and had a less crowded experience. That being said the spaces here are so wide open I think you would have an excellent experience even if all of the tourism related activities were operating at their pre-Covid capacity. 

10. What is day-to-day like on Safari? 

Every day is different! We visited 4 National parks. Each of the parks are very different from the others both in terms of landscape and wildlife. We most often only stayed one night in each location, so every morning we packed up and loaded all our belongings in the car. We then had a full day of driving. Sometimes we would see so many animals in a short amount of time. Other times we would search for a specific animal and we may go 30-40 minutes without seeing wildlife. When we saw something particularly interesting, we would stay and watch for awhile. During our safari we watched leopards for two hours, a pride of lions for an hour, elephants playing in water for an hour, and hyenas eating a carcass for about 30 minutes. Every day was incredible. As the sun started to get low in the sky we would drive to our accommodations for the night. 

11. Should I go on safari in Tanzania?

Do you want to have the experience of a lifetime? Then yes. Go to Tanzania see incredible things. Book your tour through Lion King Adventures and request Richard. You will not be disappointed. 

Now back to our current adventures. The flight from Tanzania to Uganda is short. Only about 90 minutes. This time around we had a direct flight, which was so nice. 

Ngorongoro Crater from the air

Uganda was a big question mark for us. We didn’t really know what the entry process would look like. A few months ago they announced that starting in August everyone would be required to test on arrival. It wasn’t going to be a rapid test, but they said they would turn around results in 4 hours. Either you could wait at the testing facility or you could wait for the results in a designated hotel. Then they pushed back the start date to the start of September. Then they pushed it back again to the middle of our trip. Then they said it was going to start on Sunday or Monday (we arrive Monday). Last we heard they are maybe starting it Tuesday. We hope that is the case, but we really had no idea to what expect.

It turned out the testing on arrival for everyone does in fact start tomorrow. Since we are fully vaccinated they waved us right through the health screening. We were relieved. We didn’t really want to pay for another Covid test and wait for the results since we are going to have to test again in a couple of days anyway to get back into the US. Getting through passport control was also a breeze since we had already applied for visas before we left the US. We were out of the airport in under 30 minutes, which is great. 

Our guide Emmanuel, or Emma, was waiting for us outside the airport. When we met him we had a few reservations. He had a lopsided, handwritten paper with Alison scrawled on it. He was also very soft spoken. We weren't sure at first if he was our guide, our driver, or both. It turns out he was both. He drove us to our hotel for the evening. Along the way he told us a little bit about Uganda. One interesting thing he pointed out was the VIP area of the airport. This used to be the old airport and was the site where the Israeli plane was hijacked and held hostage. Eventually the Israelis staged an operation to save the prisoners. That happened right at the Entebbe airport a little over 59 years ago.  

We are overnighting in Kampala, which is the capital of Uganda. We are staying at the Express View Inn, which is owned by our tour company. Their offices are in the same building. It was easily the worst hotel fo the trip. Our tour company told us they were trying to get it off the ground just before the pandemic started. I am sure that dampened their investment. It was a little grungy, but we made it work.

We relaxed this afternoon. There isn’t much to do in this particular area. We did spend some time on the rooftop of the building. They have some nice views of the surrounding city and Lake Victoria. Our initial impression of Uganda is that it is more modern than we expected. The roadways are clean and wide. There are many buildings, both residential and commercial, that you might see in any city in the world. We were a little disappointed our tour company didn't arrange for any activities today. We knew they would have a hard time living up the experience we had in Tanzania (mostly based on the limited communication they provided before our arrival), but so far we aren't impressed with this tour company.

We met with our tour company to go over the details of our tour in Uganda. We originally started working with them on this itinerary in July 2019. The world has changed so much since then. Our itinerary has been modified as well. It was good to make sure we were all in the same page. 

We had dinner up in the patio with Emma. We watched a nice sunset as we all chatted. We asked him what his favorite thing is to see in Uganda. After pausing for a minute he told us two things: he loves to see a perfect herd of Buffalo (like a big herd) and he loves to see baby elephants. He also told us about how important it is to learn about the way different people live when you travel. He seems like a thoughtful guy. We also talked about what to expect when we go gorilla trekking. We are so excited for that activity. 

Then we got ready to call it a night. When we were getting ready for bed the power went out. A member of the staff brought us a flashlight and explained that around these parts the power grid gets really stressed from 7pm-9pm and the power can be spotty. We were grateful for the flashlight and we are rolling with it. 

The power did come back on at some point during the night.