UGA: Lake Victoria

Entebbe, Uganda

One of the African Great Lakes, Lake Victoria is the largest lake by area in the continent. It also claims the title of the world's largest tropical lake with a surface area of close to 60,000 square kilometres. It's surrounded by three countries: Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

My BFF and I'd booked a trip to visit Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in the afternoon with African Adventure Travellers. I shall write more details about that in the next post. We set off from Hotel Ruch Kampala at 10.45am in a van provided by the tour company.

I guess they don't have a smaller car for only the two of us.

According to Google Translate, the phrase means 'I have to take care of them'.

It started raining when we hit the highway. Upon arriving at Lake Victoria, we waited in the van till the sky cleared up.

Sunset cruise with snacks and drinks, anyone?

Despite the area it covers, the lake occupies a rather shallow depression with an average depth of 40 m.

While waiting for the speedboat to arrive, we walked around the area. I happened to spot a pretty bird with dark blue feathers.

I also saw an animal that I don't know the name. It's a kind of a stork, which was seen trying to find food in a puddle.

What did it get? Take a look at the following video clip.

Due to the heavy rain earlier, the speedboat from Ngamba Island that brought guests from the morning session back to Entebbe arrived late.

The journey to Ngamba Island took about 40 minutes.

Soon enough the seats started to get wet from the splashes of water.

I had a good chit-chat with a Canadian man who came to Uganda mainly for work.

Here's a story I shall tell all of you. On our way back to Entebbe, there was something wrong with the speedboat we were on. As it couldn't take us further, we had to be rescued. We literally had to jump ship, i.e. transfer to another speedboat, somewhere in the middle of the lake. What an adventure indeed!

Seat upgrade for us since the other speedboat is modern!

Thankfully, we made it back to Entebbe safe and sound. Not surprisingly, our driver was already waiting for us at the pier. Instead of going back to the hotel, we asked for his help to drop us at a restaurant in town to have dinner.

Tanzania takes the largest share of the lake at 49%, followed by Uganda at 45% and finally Kenya at 6%. The total length of the shoreline of the lake is 7,142 km with islands constituting 3.7% of it.