Some friends of ours had told us one of the greatest things they did while in Africa was to visit the Mountain Gorillas in Uganda. They were able to go to the National Park Office, buy a permit in cash, and then make their way to see the Gorillas. Unfortunately it wasn’t so simple for us as this was simply not an option.
Gorilla tracking in Uganda is a very delicate affair. For two full years local guides will go to see the gorillas and spend an hour with them each and every day. They do this so the gorillas come to recognize them as another, benign creature rather than a threat. Only after the group is habituated to humans are groups of no more than 8 tourists taken to visit them, and the permit to do so is only available via a handful of Kampala based travel agencies. You must select one agency from the web, send a huge ($500/person + fees) money transfer, and hope not to be scammed.
Did I mention this was Africa.
Our experience was awful. We arranged for the money to be sent and then we waited and waited. Every time we logged into the Internet we just hoped the money would have arrived in Uganda so that our permits would be purchased. With only a handful of habituated gorilla groups (at that time I believe there were three) and 8 permits available each day, we were running out of time. Nevermind that if the international money transfer didn’t make it, we might not be able to track the cash down….again, this was Africa.
In the end our wire transfer, something that should only take a couple of hours, took nearly 3 nerve-wracking weeks, not to mention the team of people working to get the money to go through. We did get to see the gorillas but the weeks leading up to it were stressful with all that money hanging in the balance. The next time we had to wire money overseas, this time for our Uzbekistan visas, we went with a different bank and although it went through OK, we paid almost as much in bank fees as we did for the actual visas.
We’ve talked a lot on this blog about managing our money and our spending on the road. We had credit cards and ATM cards and most of the time we didn’t have to worry about a thing. When we did worry about it though, it was rough and scary and really temporarily ruined our time abroad.
The moral of the story is to make sure you find a good way to transfer that money over borders because otherwise you’ll pay through the nose and maybe even lose out.
Andrea says
Oh no – how terrible! I am always nervous sending money overseas, especially when time is a factor. Organizations and companies need to do better in this area.
Jillian says
Sending money makes me nervous too- at least with something like a wire transfer there is a bit of an electronic “paper trail” to follow.
Travelphant says
Great article. I’ve used Post Office money transfer services before and highly recommend them to anyone wanting to send money overseas. Keep up the good work!
Jillian says
Glad to hear your good experience!
Scubasurfer says
Well I’m glad you got to see the Gorillas, after 3 weeks of worrying it needed to end in a good way.
Love the site and thank you for sharing your experiences with us.
Jillian says
In the end it WAS definitely worth it!
jamie - cloud people adventures says
oh man, such un-needed stress. hard one to get around though ha. glad it all went through in the end. definitely one aspect of travel i could do without!
Jillian says
same here! I hate any unnecessary stress!
inka says
It always makes me laugh when in these novels money launderers and gangsters whizz huge amounts of money around the globe in seconds!! Talk about fiction.
Jillian says
I wonder which company they are using…?
The Travel Chica says
That is terrible. Unfortunately, it seems like some places don’t have any good options for transferring money.
Jillian says
We were surprised that the hold up actually wasn’t Uganda per se. I assume wire transfers must be relatively common there given how many NGOs work in the area.