Hello Everyone,
I would greatly appreciate some advice on our particular situation. We would like to go gorilla tracking in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park during out visit to Uganda this December. Because of meeting up with friends, we will already be in the Queen Elizabeth National Park on December 13 to December 15. Since Queen Elizabeth is near Bwindi, we were just going to go on to Bwindi from there and try to track gorillas. We know you have to get a permit, and that it costs 500 USD per person. What we want to know is, what's the best way to get/reserve a permit (from the U.S.)? And what's the best way to do the gorilla tracking? We would like to keep our expenses as low as possible since the trip as a whole is already going to be so expensive. This was our original thinking, but we could really use some advice:
- Have a hired driver take us from Queen Elizabeth to Bwindi (is there a cheaper way to get there?)
- At Bwindi, stay at either the Bwindi-View Bandanas or the Buhomo Community Bandas (I couldn't find a way to reserve a bed from abroad, do you know of any?)
- Purchase a gorilla permit (for one of the Buhoma gorilla groups) from a tour operator, who then tacks on a $50 or $100 service fee. I'm currently waiting for the UWA to respond if we can get the permit directly from them, but I've heard it's unlikely they'll still have permits for December available. The tour operators we've checked with seem to require us to transfer money directly to their bank. How can I be assured that this is safe and that the tour operator is trustworthy? What reliable proof of my purchase should they provide?
- Move on after we see the gorillas (or stay around and hike a bit in Bwindi)
We did consider just going on a tour that would handle all the logistics for us, but we really don't want to go back to Kampala, and we don't want to pay an extra few hundred dollars per person for the Bwindi portion if all it is is just a permit, accommodations, and meals--we feel we could do that ourselves, but maybe there are things we don't know about? For example, I didn't even realize that tracking different groups left from different points in the park until this morning. What other types of gotchas might be lurking?
On a side note, we're also wondering about the transportation options in Uganda. We think we'd like to hire a car and driver to get around, but we weren't really certain how this works. For example, if we wanted a driver to take us from Point A to Point B (where neither point is Kampala), and then we want to go from Point B to Point C, does it all have to be the same driver? If we were going to stay at Point B for a few days, do we need to keep and pay for the driver, even if we aren't using him for those days? How easy is it to engage a new driver at any of these parks?
I know this is a rather long post, but we would greatly, greatly appreciate any advice!
Thank you,
Christine
