Queen Elizabeth National Park

Today is safari day so we’re all up at the ungodly hour of 5:15am to be ready for breakfast at 6am. There are not many smiles at this hour of the day especially as it was very hot in the rooms last night. But we’re optimistic we’ll see animals. Our driver – Patrick – was feeling very poorly when we arrived yesterday so he arranged for a new driver for today’s drive. After a somewhat less than amazing breakfast (nothing wrong with it, just smallish portions and not amazing food) we piled back into the van for a full day of safari adventure. Our van has been transformed for safari with a pop up roof to allow passengers to stand and view the wildlife. It also makes for a nice natural air conditioning system!

We had a couple of quick stops to make before the game drive began in earnest. We’re not sure what they were for… some arcane bureaucratic exercise no doubt. From there we headed out onto the savanna in search of lions and elephants and hippos… it turns out safari game drives are sort of like trolling for salmon… you drive around a 2000 square kilometre park hoping to see creatures that are designed to be hard to see… we saw an elephant off in the distance but were assured we’d see lots so didn’t go closer (we should have) and we saw many types of deer and buffalo and birds… we saw a few of the deer like animals locking horns and learned that the losers have to leave the herd. We also learned that when buffalo get old, they leave the herd and form “loser” herds – sort of like retirement herds… Marie felt sorry for them for the rest of the trip… after a couple of hours of bouncing and bumping around, we saw a cluster of vans and Land Cruisers off in the distance and made our way over… Lions had been spotted… but no one really knew where… we all just kind of stared around in all directions looking for lions until a large female stood up about 30 feet in front of all the vehicles and started to amble away… the crowd erupted in a frenzy of camera clicks and excited whispers… and then a large male stood up and started to follow the female… the lions clearly couldn’t have cared less about the crowd of humans and vehicles metres away from them as they just did their lion thing and completely ignored us… I offered to sacrifice one of the students for a better show but apparently there are rules against feeding the lions…

After the lions we drove around a bit more but it was kind of anticlimactic after seeing lions… eventually we made our way to a salt lake and a series of small craft stalls… we spent some money buying souvenirs and then piled back into the van to make our way to our lunch destination – a fancy resort… a very, very fancy resort… we had planned to swim before or after lunch but what we’d heard would be 10,000 shillings (about 3 dollars) turned out to be 20USD (76,000 shillings) so none of us took advantage of their glistening, inviting pool… but lunch was delicious! And we were definitely impressed with the property and its commanding view of QENP.

After lunch we piled back into the van (a little reluctantly if I’m being honest as the resort was pretty darn comfortable) for the short trip down to the channel for the boat portion of our safari. We piled aboard and promptly took up most of the best seats and waited for the trip to start. We were all pretty excited because we could see a couple of elephants just across the channel and knew we’d be getting a close up view of them… As has been the case for most of Uganda, we did not leave on time (due mostly to a dead battery for the outboards). But eventually we were pulling away from the jetty and heading across the channel. Kazinga Channel is a 40 kilometre stretch of water that connects Edward and George Lakes and is home to hundreds of hippos, thousands of birds and provides an up close look at some of the larger mammals that head for the water each day… Over the course of our 2.5 hour “cruise” we saw African elephants, hippos, buffalo, Nile crocodiles, deer type things (I forget their proper names), fishermen and a bazillion birds… so, so many birds… In all, it was a relaxing and pleasant way to see the animals… and so much cooler (as in temperature) than sweating and bouncing around in the van trying to find a few hundred animals in thousands of square kilometres of bush.

After the boat cruise we headed back to Simba to wash off the road dust, clean up and grab dinner. There may have been a few naps as well. And the drinks were cold this time! Part way through dinner, the power shut off again so we were able to enjoy dinner by candlelight. In all, a long but thoroughly enjoyable day.