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| This hippo welcomed us to the park |
Arranging to get to the park without a tour company was not easy. One must arrange a boat to the island through the park and I went through about five numbers before reaching someone that could answer my logistics questions. It didn't help that they didn't have great phone service on the island and that I needed to confirm the day we were coming so the boat would pick us up. We were unsure of which day we'd exactly be going and I only ended up sending them a text the day before, hoping they would receive it and plan accordingly. All the other information was unclear so we prepared by bringing all of our food as well.
I had received instructions to drive to a town called Muganza and head for the port. There are several port-looking locations and we drove around a bit until we found one with a partially obscured sign for the park. It was bustling with local lake traffic and the overloaded boats were truly impressive. It really reminded me of some kind of 18th century port with dozens of hustlers loading and unloading, people shouting orders at each other, and passengers frantically trying to either collect their belongings or load onto a boat. Everyone kept asking us if we had called the park and arranged before and I said that we had. Then, out of nowhere, a young guy comes and says that he had traveled from Arusha that day to join us on the boat out to the island. He said he had just talked with them and that the boat was on its way. True to his word the boat showed up, we loaded in, and in 10 minutes we were at the park.
From dock in the park we loaded into a safari vehicle and drove to the park headquarters. We had already interacted with over 10 people, seemingly all park staff. It was strange and reminded me of when I lived in China and places were overstaffed resulting in constant attention, warranted or not. We eventually reached the headquarters and I saw on their notice board that they had more than 50 people on staff for the park. I later found out that most of these were rangers that occupied the various look out points in search of poachers.
When we finally made our way to our bandas, comfortable little cottages, we were pleasantly surprised to see we were the only ones there. The site is located in a pleasant bay with an old boat converted to a seating area looking over the water. Nearly tame Sitatunga and Bush Pig visited us throughout the day and three hippos lurked in the water. In the evening we went for a short walk and then sat with a few of the camp staff around a fire. When it was time to go to sleep they said we should be accompanied by a ranger. This happens often here and it always feels a bit over the top. Well, this time, it was not. When we approached our banda we saw two big hippos and a baby, less than 8m (25 ft) from us! It was an awesome, though heart-stopping, experience.
The next morning we went on an early walk to a lookout point and then to a swamp. The island was dry, having had their wet season end around February. We saw tracks and fresh dung of elephants, as well as several ungulates of different varieties. A couple of very impressive sized crocs also periodically slithered off the shore into the water.
Rubondo Island National Park was a great experience, though with the entrance fees, camping fees, walking fees, etc, it's becoming a bit unreasonable to visit. The uniqueness of the island and the tameness of the animals made it unique for sure and we were lucky to have the place to ourselves. It is a shame that staying overnight in the parks has become cost prohibitive but we consider ourselves lucky that we can afford to do it even once!
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| Walk along the shore as the sunset. Careful for crocs! |
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| The bay. |
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| Do not fall into the spiderweb. |
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| Boat ride in the morning back to the mainland. |
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