Kristen here
We organized our safari with Red Chili which provided us with a place to sleep upon arriving to Kampala. We awoke early Sunday morning and departed on our 3 day adventure with our guide Sam in his matatu with a "Safari type" convertible roof. We drove most of the morning Sunday and arrived at the Ugandan Rhino Sanctuary. There are 12 Rhinos in Uganda total, 10 of which are at this sanctuary. Shout out to Walt Disney's Animal Kingdom who donated one rhino that mated with a rhino donated from Kenya. The offspring was named Baby Obama! (President Obama's father is from Kenya, his mother from the USA. Hahaha…). The Obama obsession in this country continues. We thought the Obama t-shirts, flip flops, and belts were bad… the baby Obama rhino takes the cake.
Our safari group consisted of the 3 of us, Katie and Leenisha (the other 2 FIMRC volunteers) Eric and Annalee (veterinary students from Canada) and Vicky (a british girl traveling for her work with an NGO). We became close new friends. As we continued on our way until we reached Murchison Falls National Park. We immediately started seeing our first glimpse of the wild life…a TON of baboons. They would sit in the middle of the road until we nearly hit them. The babies would sit on the side of the road and just look at the "mzungus" driving past. Once we got to our campsite, there were multiple warthogs just hanging out. We called them all "Pumba". I'm pretty sure the 8 of us sang songs from the Lion King multiple times over the next few days…
We settled into our tents, had some dinner and taught our new friends the card game "liverpool" (shoutout to Michelle's grandpa). The next day was going to be an early start!
Our 6:00am alarm went off far too soon! But we headed out in our convertible matatu none the less. We crossed the Nile and entered into the grasslands. I'm not sure how to word how cool it was to see this "zoo in the wild" (shoutout to Dad!). We have all agreed that photos will not do it justice….so I think I'll leave most of this blog up to your imagination! ;-) The deer, giraffes, elephants, monkeys, birds, hippos were all so beautiful in person. And it was surreal to see them in their natural habitat. Our convertible matatu went chasing after "the Lions" but we never ended up seeing them. :-( So very cool though. We were glad to have our vet friends on the trip with us to give us a little education too! We loved Eric's "fun fact of the day" too.
We returned to camp and had lunch before heading out on the afternoon's activities. Our safari continued on a boat down the Nile! We saw many crocodiles, hippos and other animals from the water. Our final destination was the bottom of Murchison Falls….which is a beautiful waterfall (and the park's namesake!). We took a rather sweaty but BEAUTIFUL hike through the foliage with the sun setting. The hike itself was incredible, but the destination was even better. At the top of the falls, we could get as close to the rushing water as we dared. We took some time to sit and admire the beauty. Eventually, we had to leave and head back to camp; seeing many animals along the way.
Tuesday morning of our safari was when we went chimp tracking. Our guides were incredibly enthusiastic about the animals and I thought for sure one of them was going to stick his finger in some poop to see how "fresh" it was. His tactic seemed to work though since we ended up seeing many chimps. They are just as playful in the wild as they are in the zoo. Our safari group was sad to leave the chimp habitat but it was time to head back to Kampala.
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