It’s an early start indeed with a 5am alarm waking us to the first birdsong of the day. Today we’re trekking chimpanzees! We’ve been warned that it’s not for the faint hearted and although the activity is booked for the whole day with the local guides its pretty much unheard of that anyone lasts longer than a few hours.

What’s gonna make it tough is that you have to go prepared for all eventualities; take warm clothes, rain jacket, plenty of water, long socks to stop the ants getting in, a hat for the sun, gardening gloves to protect your hands and of course proper hiking boots. But at the same time it can get hot so it’s best to have layers of clothes you can take off if necessary and then of course there’s having to take a bag to carry your water, camera, snacks, etc. I can feel it’s going to be a tough day.

We meet with our guide Benson at the park entrance to the Kibale Forest and he takes us in the general direction of chimp screaming in the distance. We catch up with them with about 40 minutes and it becomes apparent why this activity is described as quite tough; chimpanzees are pretty much constantly on the move, looking for food and keeping a check on their territory to make sure no other chimp families are moving in. And they’re fast little blighters too!

The chimps seem to be either moving quickly through the dense bush and howling at each other or quietly sitting together and pruning each other. The problem is that keeping up with them is quite tricky, having to hack through thick foliage with machete knives and follow their noises and then when they stop for a group bonding session they are absolutely silent so quite hard to find. It was almost impossible to take any sort of photo or video of them, but just trying to trek these amazing animals was both exciting and great fun.

Over the next few hours we did our best to try and keep up, following the screams and banging of the trees and ripping our skin and clothes to pieces in the process.

After about 7 hours the chimps had finally found some trees with fruit in where they could just stay put for an hour or so and stuff their faces to their heart’s content. And when they started throwing fruit at us we realised it was probably time to call it a day!

Back at Isunga Lodge we admired the view over the valley and relaxed with some more G&T’s.