You're not gonna believe this...

This weekend Meg and I took a short 2 1/2 day trip to Queen Elizabeth National Park, just about 2 hours northwest of Mbarara. The Queen herself will be visiting the park later this year for CHOGM - the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting that Uganda is hosting this year (signs everywhere - esp. in Kampala - "Are YOU ready for CHOGM?!?"). Apparently she plans to "dedicate" the park, a full 50 years after her first visit to Uganda as a young woman. Everyone is freaking out about her visit, and many a street, runway, or building from here to Kampala is in the process of renovation and touch-ups to make everything as beautiful as possible. It's led to a real boom in development around the country - although arguably only for middle and upper class Ugandans.

But anyway, the REAL point of my story is that we got to go see the national park of her namesake. And it was so worth it. By far the highlight of our trip was the opportunity to track chimpanzees in Chambura Gorge. I'll speak for both of us when I say that it was probably one of the wildlife highlights of my life (our lives)... we got to see two males, and the video below speaks for itself.



The human resemblence, watching them in the wild - scratching their arms and looking right at you - is unbelievable. I'm so lucky and thankful for this experience!