We arrived back to Kabale today from an adventurous safari weekend!

After a quick stop for food in Mbarara (one of the biggest cities in Uganda), we set out Friday to Lake Mburo National Park, where we were able to ride on top of our van for the best view of tons of animals. We saw some vervet monkeys, warthogs, olive baboons, crested cranes, topis, zebras, water bucks, cape buffaloes, and excitingly, giraffes (which are rare to see)! After driving through this park, we drove over to our campsite in Queen Elizabeth National Park. This was the nicest campsite I’ve ever visited, though. Each tent had lanterns inside of it, outlets to charge my phone, and a comfortable cot. At dinnertime, they set up outdoor tables with lanterns at each table and served a four-course meal with red wine. When I went to bed, I was lulled to sleep by the sound of hippos, frogs, and crickets. The sounds were so relaxing that I feel like I caught up on a week’s worth of sleep (I hadn’t been sleeping too well in Kampala). It was a little scary, though, because this campsite is still part of Queen Elizabeth National Park, so any animals that live there are able to walk through the campsite. Because of this, I had to have a guide walk me places at night in case of any animal encounters. This made using the restroom at night a little disconcerting.

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After our first night at the campsite, we departed on another safari drive, where we saw empalas, uganda kobs, and lions (2 lionesses and 2 male lions!) Poaching is still a problem here, so all of the lions had trackers on their necks for conservation purposes. In the afternoon, we went on a boat ride, where we saw tons of hippos, marabou storks, saddle beak storks, crocodiles, monitor lizards, cormorants, and as many as 23 elephants. The elephants were so amazing and cute because they had 3 tiny babies. After the boat ride, we had a quick stop at the equator and then headed home.

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