Safari - Lions and Hippos Galore!!

Our safari this weekend was sooo awesome!! The drive to Queen Elizabeth National Park took about 7 hours. Saturday morning we woke up really early to go out on our game drive, and quickly discovered that though we were told you could not reserve a guide, nothing is really as they tell you here in Africa. So three hours later we finally went out with a guide, being told not to expect to see much because early mornings are better than late. Boy, were they wrong! We saw a couple herds of elephant, tons of cobb, baboons (which are very strong and dangerous!) and….a lion and lioness!!! The lions were less than 20 feet from our van and were so regal. Apparently it’s mating season, because they did the dirty multiple times…needless to say the guys in our group found that pretty amusing and rehashed it throughout the weekend, with us girls rolling our eyes. Saturday afternoon we went on a boat ride on the Kazinga Channel, a natural channel that joins Lake George and Lake Edward. It was soo cool! We were feet from tons of hippos and water buffalo, and saw crocodiles, monitor lizards, and countless species of exotic, crazy looking birds. Apparently male water buffalo fight each other, and the loser is exiled from the herd. We saw 5 or 6 “losers” on the edge of the lake, waiting to die! They just stay there until they get attacked by something and killed or get stuck in the mud. How sad! I guess that’s natural population control for you! There are a number of tribes that live in the park because they were there before it was made a park, and one of the tribes lives along the lake and fish for their livelihood. Minutes after passing by huge hippo, water buffalo, and crocodiles, we saw some of the village kids swimming in the very same water! The guide said crocodile attacks are common. We camped on a site in the park at the top of an incline only a couple hundred feet from the lake. There were no fences around the site, and all day and night tons of warthogs wandered around our tents and grunted and growled! It was frightening to wake up to the sound of a warthog grunting just outside the tent, but nothing compared to the second night when hippos wandered around our tents!! The whole group woke up around 1:30 AM Saturday night to the sound of hippo growling that sounded way too close. We all conversed and quickly realized the hippos were outside our tent, seeing their shadows! Needless to say, we all freaked out a bit and didn’t sleep too much that night. Hippos are herbivores, but they’re really vicious and won’t hesitate to tear a person apart. What an experience that was! Dad, I honestly didn’t give it much thought when you said camping in the park would be interesting, with all kinds of animal noises….boy were you right! The park was so beautiful – the savannah lands are just like you see on National Geographic…or the Lion King :). In the backdrop are huge mountain ranges which border the Congo and are always veiled in misty clouds…so beautiful. I had such a great time and was so grateful to get to see all I did.

Classes are going well this week – busy with lots of papers. This Friday I’ll go into Kampala for some craft shopping and Saturday we’re heading to Jinja to raft the River Nile on class 5 rapids!!! Woohoo!