1.820.3345.33
Contact@TravelTourWP.com
Chimpanzees are humans’ closest living relatives, sharing around 98.7% of our DNA. Chimps live in social groups with similar social dynamics. Many informative chimp documentaries have featured the Ngogo chimpanzees, residing inside Uganda’s Kibale Forest National Park, also known as the Primate Capital of the World. On this tour, you’ll visit Ngogo and see several other primates too, while partaking in exciting activities.
Entebbe International Airport, Uganda
Pickup on arrival at Entebbe International Airport
Our company representative and a Safari guide will be waiting to receive you when you land at the airport. Your safari guide will drive you to your hotel in the green beautiful town of Entebbe by the freshwater Lake Victoria shoreline. If you feel like taking a stroll this afternoon, you can visit Entebbe’s wildlife education center, several beaches, restaurants, craft villages, botanical gardens, and or taste Uganda’s nightlife. Otherwise, staying at your hotel to freshen up and kill the jetlag in preparation for tomorrow’s journey might just be what your body needs right now. Either way, our objective is to give you your best time in Uganda.
Your driver guide will pick you up after your breakfast. You’ll drive to western Uganda. Reaching Fort Portal town by mid-day, you’ll stop over for a meal and thereafter continue to Semuliki National Park. You will trek the Sempaya Hot Springs trail. Get your camera ready for the monkeys and birds along the trek. While monkeys are the best actors in the wilderness, the birds are the best musicians here. Just call this whole tour ‘Hollywood in the Woods.” But the birds and monkeys are not even the central attractions of Semuliki National Park. It’s the male and female hot springs, locally known as Sempaya. Sempaya hot springs eject boiling geysers 2 meters into the air. Their steam water gets out of the ground boiling at 103°C (almost 220°F). To experiment with the hotness of the water, you will place eggs or bananas in that water and wait for a few minutes. Within 10 minutes, food will be ready to serve.
This is the moment you came for! You’ll begin with a sumptuous breakfast against the soundtrack of singing birds in the distance. Then, you’ll join a small group of tourists to track the Ngogo chimpanzee community, which is habituated. You’ll spend 1–2 hours with these famous chimps in the true sense of ‘experiential trekking.’ The experiential chimp trekking does not have crowds which you may find in ordinary chimpanzee tracking where several small groups of tourists track different groups of chimps in the same chimp community and can sometimes crisscross each other during tracking. This is your exclusive moment with the Ngogo chimps which have been featured in award-winning wildlife documentaries, including Netflix’s Chimp Empire series (2023), the award-winning Rise of the Warrior Apes (2017), and Disney’s Chimpanzee (2012).
Later, we will take you to witness jaw-dropping landscapes at the Ndali Crater Lakes.
After breakfast, you’ll depart the lodge with a packed lunch. Your driver guide will lead you to Kanyanchu Uganda Wildlife Headquarters where you will be briefed about the do’s and don’ts of chimpanzee trekking. You will be allocated a group to trek with; each group must consist of not more than six people. Searching for chimps may take anywhere between 10 minutes and several hours before you can find them. But along the way, there’s a great deal of plants, birds, tantalizing herbal trees, forest elephants, and a host of other primates to see. Once you have found the chimpanzees, you will be allowed one hour with them while observing their behavior. Make sure to return to the park headquarters for your trekking certificate that confirms that you tracked chimpanzees in Uganda. After lunch, you’ll proceed to Bigodi Wetland, where you will even see more animals, butterflies, and birds – on foot.
You’ll have your breakfast and thereafter be transferred to Lake Mburo National Park on this morning. You will drive through rolling hills, farmlands, and local markets along the way. You will have Lunch en-route before entering the park. Upon arrival, you’ll check into the lodge. Later, you’ll embark on an afternoon-evening game drive in Lake Mburo National Park. You’ll return to the lodge for dinner and an overnight stay.
You’ll enjoy your cup of coffee/tea, and head out for a walking safari, which will be facilitated by a Uganda Wildlife Authority ranger. You will get an opportunity to view animals that you would have seen on a game drive, only that this time, you will be on the same ground level as them. Oh, except for the giraffes, because they’ll be looking down on you, literally. Nothing is more exciting than this.
In the afternoon, you’ll go for an afternoon boat cruise on Lake Mburo, where you will have an opportunity to see crocodiles, hippos, and water birds such as the rare African Finfoot and African Fish Eagle. Many animals including the buffaloes and antelopes gather here to drink water—another opportunity to enjoy wildlife from the comfort of your boat.
You will check out of the lodge after breakfast and drive back to Entebbe International Airport for your departure flight. Depending on the time of your departure flight, you may be able to stop at the Equator for polar experiments and photography. You’ll be dropped off at the airport.
It’s hard to say goodbye, but we will have created great memories with you and we can hold onto that for the rest of our lives. Thanks for choosing Hospitable Africa Tours and Travel. We wish you a safe journey.
