Last week I returned from a safari vacation to Uganda together with my girlfriend. We visited 5 national parks and saw more big mammals than we could have hoped for. I tried to do some herping along the way, but that turned out to be difficult. Usually I would find many agamas, skinks and geckos at the campsites and lodges, mostly the same 5-6 species. I had 3 quick glimses of snakes, none of which I could determine for certain, though one was probably a Naja nigricollis. I spend many hours walking through rainforests and bushes around the lodges and campsites, in the late afternoon or in the evening after dark, but usually I wouldn't see a single herp until I returned to the lodge were agamas, skinks and geckos were abundant. Since we were mostly on game drives or travelling during the morning hours I couldn't do much morning herping, but I still was surprised by the total lack of reptiles as soon as I set a foot outside a campsite. Maybe I'd have to work on my African herping skills, but we also spend many hours driving slowly through national parks, without a single reptile basking or crossing the road, except for one tortoise. Does anyone have similar experiences?
Furthermore,
That said, I still saw quite some nice herps: the agamas have amazing colours, there were some beautiful frogs, monitor lizards being too fast to trap on camera and I found my first ever chameleons. My herpetological highlight was a huge nile crocodile, around 4,5-5 meters in length, which we were able to observe from very close (too close, according to my girlfriend). If we use herp-kilograms as a measure of success instead of number of species, the trip was extremely rewarding .
Some photos (I didn't get far yet with the determinations, any help is welcome):