A Visit to Entebbe

On Thursday, March 8th, Uganda celebrated Women’s Day. It was quite odd to have a holiday during the work week, but we enjoyed it none the less! David and I took a day trip to Entebbe, a 45 minute matatu ride from Kampala. Entebbe is a beautiful city, green and lush, on the shore of Lake Victoria. We flew into Entebbe early in the morning back in August, but hadn’t spent much time there.


We spent the morning exploring the Entebbe Botanical Gardens, enjoying the vast assortment of tropical plants. The British brought plants in from around the world when they started the gardens in the 40’s, including some Chinese bamboo and California Palm trees. They also had many Ugandan staples as well, including banana, matoke, avocado, cocoa, tea, and coffee plants. We enjoyed watching the fishermen bring in their nets on the shores of Lake Victoria and were refreshed by the shade of the small, dense jungle where the old classic “Tarzan” was purportedly filmed.


David pretending to be Tarzan!




After meandering through the gardens, at the end of our guided tour, we were surprised to discover a tree full of velvet tailed monkeys! Monkeys of all sizes were swinging and playing, eating and chatting. We were mesmerized by them and decided to track them as they traveled around the gardens.



When we had our share of monkeys we walked downtown and ate lunch at a local Pub, recommended in our Bradt’s Guide to Uganda book. Watching CNN kept us occupied while we waited one hour too long for our tasty yet inexpensive food, a spicy Chinese dish chicken pizza. After walking around and exploring Entebbe all morning, we were quite refreshed when we finally jumped into the cool pool at the Windsor Lake Victoria Hotel. The rest of the afternoon was spent reading, napping and relaxing there. We had no problems catching a matatu back to Kampala and enjoyed our nice little get away.


Momma and baby


David communicating with the monkeys


Children who live by the gardens