Along our morning hike through the rainforest of Budongo past enormous mohageny trees (Budongo has the highest concentration of them in East Africa) and along increasingly hot and muggy trails as the temperature rose, we finally found chimps. Eddie, a sub adult, and another chimp sat high above us in the trees eating fruits and taking a few breaks to stare down at us with curious looks on their faces. After about 20 minutes a nearby group hooted and hollered and Eddie responded. Our guide told us to wait: either they would descend to the ground to meet up with the others or the others would join Eddie. A few minutes later, the silence of the forest was filled with the crashing of branches and the rustling of leaves as two chimps approach on the ground. Soon the crashing sounds were coming from us- clumsy humans attempting to get near. Right in front of us one ascended the tree and later was followed by one descending right in front of Daniel- I captured it all on video but video is impossible to upload from Uganda. As we returned to the road, our guide apologized that we had only seen a few chimps but to us it was an amazing experience- especially for Dr A and me who hadn't seen any chimps last summer when we trekked. The entire experience of hiking through the jungle to meet up with our closest relatives was a highlight of the whole trip!
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