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July 1 - Going to Kibale
We finally arrived in Kibale after a very long day in the car.
We got to the national park info center and hung out for awhile. The place was completely covered in butterflies...I'd never seen that many before in my life. There were also a tree with some upside down bird nests that were pretty interesting (know what these are Brandon?). We waited around at the info center for awhile - supposedly a porter was going to arrive to take our bags to the Kibale tree house. No porter ever came, so Medi took Mike's bag, and one of the women working there took my bag. Then we started walking. And walking. And walking. When we had walked about half a mile on a forest trail we arrived at the destination. We were literally supposed to be staying in a tree house. This was a very high tree house, with a long, scary ladder. There were also a bunch of resident spiders, ONE twin bed, and no windows. For light there was a lantern, and there was a pit toilet near the base of the tree...no shower. The upside was that there was a gorgeous view from the tree.
I started to "get settled," when Mike very clearly let me know that we shouldn't stay there. He ran back to the info center to chase down our driver, and he told him that we'd prefer to stay somewhere else...this place was *in the middle of nowhere.*
Medi said that he knew of a good place that he could take us to, so he drove us to a tourist house he knew of about half an hour drive from the info center. This is where our day got better! We got to the tourist house, and met the owner, a very friendly and welcoming man named Ezra. He did a wonderful job making sure that we were comfortable and taken care of. We stayed in a self-contained banda (thatched roof hut) on his property, and while we did find a big spider (as we have in almost every room we've had), it was really nice and clean. We had a late dinner, since he wasn't ready to have guests - we had soup, beef, avocados and bread. Finally after a long day, we headed to bed.
