The geographical position Uganda in the shadows of Great Western and Eastern near Kasese; Maramagambo is an extensive rain forest which is part of Queen Elizabeth National Park (QENP) in the far west of Uganda. There are numerous small caves like Bats Cave and Hunters Cave. Maramagambo is a home to hundreds of fruit bats and pythons, which are often observed in the crevices of the cave floor, using the bats as a source of food. The caves are visited on guided tours to the park, under the general theme of biodiversity.
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| Maramagambo Forest |
In the local language Maramagambo means 'the end of words', based on a local legend. A group of people local dwellers went hunting ; while pursuing an elephant, and the elephant ran down the hill to swim across the lake (elephants are the only other large mammals that can swim long distances) to lose his seekers. The lake was so deep that, surprised, the elephant drowned. The hunters got lost in the forest, some how they found their way out of the forest after several days; exhausted and barely able to speak.
Maramagambo Forest is one of the largest forests in Uganda. It is a medium altitude moist, semi-deciduous forest. Characteristics of such forest are increasingly becoming rare in Africa. Stretching up to the eastern escarpment and provides cool respite from the equatorial sun and offers an alternative wildlife, including chimpanzees, huge pythons, bush baby, baboons, vervet monkeys, red-tailed monkeys, colonies of cave-dwelling fruit bats.
Above the lake, where a waterfall feeds the body below, was the cave. It was beautiful, shrouded in thick, dripping moss. The growth around the cave glowed in healthy greens, fertilized by the rocks of guano deposited at the floor of the cave. I remembered hearing that the air inside a batcave is toxic, but one side of the cave was open, giving an eery quality to the vision The carnivorous snakes probably find easy meals from dead or fallen bats.
Several forest trails have been developed for walking and it is possible to rent canoes to paddle on Lake Nyamusingiri. The Maramagambo forest is the only place in the park with spectacular Blue Lakes and craters. Other features of attraction in the forest include diversity of butterflies. The bat and the hunters cave are other pleasant experiences that the forest offers, and of course some forest birds.
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| Bats Cave |
In July 2008 the caves at Maramagambo Forest became world infamous, after a tourist from the Netherlands died after returning from a journey to Uganda. She was - obviously on her Africa journey - infected with the extremely dangerous Marburg virus, a deadly disease similar to Ebola, which causes haemorrhagic fever and bleeding. As she had visited the caves, the bats were immediately accused to be responsible. But this was an isolated case, during ten years of tourism in the area nothing similar happened before, and three other tourists who visited the cave with her were not infected. But as long as the source of the infection is not identified the park authorities decided to close the caves, just in case the bats were responsible for the fever.
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