Durama

After loosing precious time in Fort Portal because I am blended by unmet expectations and apart from that I fill up my tank without having enough cash, I find a wonderful community campsite at Lake Nkuruba Nature Reserve in the Kyatwa Volcanic Field. Wah! Just in time for sunset. What a pretty, clean, grassy place surrounded by tall trees with black-and-white and red colobus monkeys and vervets. I am warmly welcomed by Good (later I will also meet a girl named Fortunate and a soldier called Innocent) who works here for several years and park the car under one of these trees next to the ridge which steeply descends into the crater lake. There is a path down to the water with a boat, bathing possibility and many places to hang my hammock. The trees are full with colourful birds and I can spot Ross's and Great Blue turacos for the first time. Yeah! Until now most of all my visited camps were run-down due to the lack of tourists but not this one even though I am the only foreign guest. Locals like to hang out here for a swim or dinner. The staff is young, fresh, friendly, passionate and the whole place looks very alive but calm and cozy. The campsite has been established more than 30 years ago by a European couple and is now in religious hands. Wonderful climate to hang out for at least a whole day which I need to work up on all the mapping I have done during the previous days of exploration. Hence, a nice day with the laptop in my hammock down at the lakeside. The colobus monkeys harvest only leaves and basically stay in the trees for all the time without interfering with me even tough they are not afraid to sit on the branches next to me. The vervet monkeys prefer a human’s diet and are very clever in trying to steal from my rations. They go totally crazy for bananas! They sit down next to me and patiently take single pieces from my hand. It is more funny than annoying because they never stay longer than for an hour in the mornings and continue their neighbourhood route in search of food. In the evening they come back and play in the trees. Outside of this tiny nature reserve monkeys are generally non-existent because people hunt them down for meat and for protection of their crops and fruits in the fields. The campsite managers established a banana plantation dedicated only to the vervet monkeys in order to keep their population stable in this area. They also had many avocado trees but unfortunately the colobus monkeys did not only eat their leaves but also the bark which killed all trees. This experiment emphasizes what happens when you try to introduce plants into an ecosystem where they are not necessarily native ;-)

The first night I wake up at 0500 in the morning because somebody is throwing “things” at my car. Later on at 0630 “things” get really tricky because they also get wet and sticky. Apparently two football teams of colobus monkeys decided to have their morning toilet just above my car. And sleeping with open windows results in being shitted and pissed all over from the outside and the inside. My car quickly starts to stink like a festival toilet. The first time during these two months I feel like having reached my final destination, yet another home! It’s the first place where I really think that I will be coming back another day. Good helps me with cleaning the car the next day :-pRead more