The 2 000 sq km Queen
Elizabeth National Park to the southwest of Uganda straddles the equator
in the western arm of East Africa’s Rift Valley. It’s
bordered by the Rwenzori Mountains to the northwest and by Lake Edward
to the southwest and park headquarters at Mweya are 64 kms from the
town of Kasese. The park wholly incorporates Lake George and is divided
into two sectors, the north and south. It is split neatly in two by the
Kazinga Channel – the body of water that joins Lake George to
Lake Edward. It was named, quite obviously, by England’s Queen Elizabeth
when she visited in 1954 and is still referred to today as the QEII.
This is Uganda’s offering of a regular East African game park. Plains support herds of animals, which are viewed from a vehicle on
the park’s network of tracks, rather than the specialist Ugandan
forests featuring mainly primates.
Once the QEII was teaming with game. That was before the civil war when various
armies looted the park of its wildlife – hunting for ivory,
trophies, or simple massacring animals because they occupied the
land they were fighting for. Since then, animal numbers have recovered,
albeit slowly. Whilst the number of species is high, you wont
find the quantities of game of other East African parks. There
are over 100 species of mammals and reptiles including some very
old elephant (40-65 years old) that survived the 1960-70s massacre;
lion (some of which have been known to climb trees); buffalo; Uganda
kobs; hyena; leopard; monitor lizard; and a number of snakes, including
pythons and cobras. The Kazinga Channel alone is said to contain
the world's largest concentration of hippos, and a fair smattering
of Nile Crocodiles. Astonishingly, QEII has 568 of Uganda’s
1 017 species of birds. That's over a quarter of Africa’s bird species and more than any other park in Africa. The highlight has to be the
boat trip on the Kazinga Channel that launches at the park headquarters
at Mweya. You can watch thousands of hippos at close range.This is where to get that photo of a hippo yawning. Buffalo and
waterbuck come to the water to cool off – keeping a wary eye
on the crocs – and the water’s edge attracts thousands
of birds.
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