SAFARI!!!!

Moses, our driver, picked us up early on Sunday morning to start our safari.  We drove and drove and drove, past where we for our outreach – Kakooge – and kept driving, stopping for some delicious fresh pineapple along the way.  We reached our first destination – Ziwa Rhino Reserve.  We learned that Rhinos became extinct in Uganda in the 1980s and it wasn’t until the late 90s that people invested in the Rhino Fund Uganda to try to bring back the white rhino into the country.  Thanks to donations from Kenya and from the Animal Kingdom in Florida, there are many breeding rhinos in the park again!  The residents named one of the babies – whose mom is an Animal Kingdom rhino from the US and dad is from Kenya – Obama. 

Just posing with some rhinos. 

The Ziwa Park is a really cool place – you get a guide who takes you out to a location that rhinos have been spotted in by another officer.  You can get really close to the rhinos, WAY closer than we expected.  You have to back up when they walk in your direction, or when the baby rhino becomes uncomfortable with your presence/your waving at them and your general excitement.  When we finally made the rhinos uncomfortable enough we trekked back to our van and started the long drive to Murchison Falls National Park.  Moses had set up a tour guide to do an evening game drive with us when he heard from a few friends that there were lions in the park earlier in the evening! 

Bella and Baby Obama - Obama LOVED us. 

 Starting the game drive, we were zooming past baboons, elephants, and giraffe to get to the lions before nightfall.  We were all wondering why we weren’t stopping to take pictures but Moses assured us we would have plenty of time for that (and he was definitely right).  Once we reached the spot where the lions were, we pulled RIGHT up alongside them.  They were literally less than 15 feet from our windows – mating.  It was incredible.  The lions were beautiful and we quickly became obsessed with finding lions on every game drive.

Lions right outside our car! 

After our lion spectacle we headed back to our lodge – which we thought were going to be tents in the middle of a group of elephants but turned out to be a really nice lodge where we ate the most delicious vegetable soup EVER and then called it a night.  We found out that the next night we would be moving to Fort Murchison, which is a little closer to the park – we really liked Global Village and weren’t sure how we felt about that.

Checking out the tent on The Nile.

We are now on our second night at Fort Murchison and can definitely say we have never done anything like this before.  We are literally camping on The Nile!  Each tent has two twin beds with mosquito nets and a small table with a lamp for the times the lights are on (5:30AM-8AM, and 7PM-thirty minutes after the last guests eat dinner).  Katie made Dan sleep in a tent by himself because…c’mon, sleeping in a tent on The Nile alone sounds terrifying.  Katie and Marc woke up in the middle of the night to see the outline of an elephant eating grass about 20 feet from the front door of their tent….which was both amazing and slightly unnerving.  Luckily, there is a night guard to prevent anything from getting too close to the tents.  The food here is delicious – unlike anything we have had anywhere in Uganda and anything we have expected.  Moses calls it “muzung food” (white people food) and definitely wishes he had some local food to eat, but we are thoroughly enjoying our salads (we finally gave up on not eating raw vegetables), t-bone steaks, pan seared tilapia, and roasted potatoes. 

The view from our tent/where elephants hang out at 2 AM.

Inside the tents - they were actually awesome.

The bottom of Murchison Falls from out cruise boat. 

The game drives have been awesome –        we have seen lions all 3 of the days we have gone out!  Today we saw a lioness stalking some antelope looking for dinner, and saw two male Water Backs fighting for dominance.  We have taken tons of pictures of hippos, elephants, giraffes, all the different kinds of antelope in the park, and PUMBA! There are warthogs everywhere.  The only thing we have yet to see is a leopard – but since there are only about 60 in the park, which is huge, that might not happen.  We got to cruise the Nile today to the foot of the falls, but unfortunately it poured for a lot of the time (apparently we are unlucky with most modes of transportation).  We have one more game drive tomorrow morning and then our driver is going to take us to an area that has no hippos/crocodiles where a lot of local fisherman fish….we suspect that Moses may think we are going to go swimming – but we have seen River Monsters a few too many times for that. 

Marc, Dan, & Katie at the top of the falls!

On Thursday morning we will get up REALLLLLLY early and leave our camp for the last time around 6AM to head out for Chimp tracking and then head to the airport where we can hopefully get on a flight home – keep your fingers crossed!  (We should be able to add some pictures soon hopefully!!)


ALSO - dont forget to check out the picture of the resected mandible if you wanted to see it! (Go to "Older Posts" and click the "THE LUGGAGE HAS ARRIVED (and so has Dr. Farmer)" post, its at the very bottom!)