Our first Safari!

A couple weeks ago, we went on a safari!!! It was exciting, interesting, and stressful. Trying to plan anything, especially vacations, in Uganda isveeeeerrrrry different than planning in the US. You never get astraight answer from people when you ask them questions, or you get conflicting answers, or you getpeople telling you what they think you want to hear...its veryfrustrating. And then with transportation - whenever people tell youit will take a certain amount of time, its always safe to add on acouple extra hours, so you don't get frustrated.

We went up to northeastern Uganda to do our safari - it wasone of the coolest experiences ever, and it was everything I hoped itwould be! It was just like being on the real-life scene of the LionKing. I loved it! We got to see all the animals we wanted to see,both from a distance, and up close! The very first night, when wearrived at our 'bandas' (little circular huts) we saw a whole herd ofzebras in the field across the road! We were so excited! They are socool looking! That night, we also saw a warthog, and a waterbuck.

The next morning, we woke up to seeing an elephant walkingthrough our campground - apparently, it had been 2 months since he hadlast been there - we were lucky to see him! We also heard later onthat there had been a couple of lions walking through the site earlierthat morning...ahh!!!

When we finally left on our morning safari, we were so excited! Theweather was perfect, and we had already seen a great variety ofanimals! We took it as a very good sign, and it was! We started outby driving through a herd of over 1,000 water buffalo, which wascrazy! We were completely surrounded! They are kind of funny-lookinganimals, and they are very jumpy - they would run away anytime wemoved too quickly. We also saw some giraffes and elephants in thedistance, and of course we wanted to see them up close, so we took offin our truck to catch them. We finally got close to the giraffes -they were right next to our truck, and we got some awesome pictures ofthem! Giraffes look so funny when they walk or run. But they arereally beautiful, I loved seeing them! Then, we looked to the otherside of the road, and saw a big herd of elephants! Unfortunately, wecouldn't get very close to them, but we were hopeful that we would seesome later on. We saw all kinds of beautiful birds there - big andsmall, and all sorts of colors. My favorites were bright red, yellowand bright metallic blue. Beautiful! Oh, we also saw a littlecrocodile - maybe 3 feet long - on the side of a water hole.

On our afternoon safari, we really lucked out! Almost immediately, we saw 2 lions on a rock a few hundred yards from the road -they were just laying there, relaxing. It was so exciting to seethem! Pretty soon after that, we drove up to a herd of elephants.Did you know that elephants are among the most dangerous animals to beclose to? Its true, especially if they have babies they areprotecting. Well, we were lucky enough to get within 50 yards of amomma elephant and her two babies! When she noticed we were closethough, she started charging at us...I never knew how fast an elephant couldrun! It was so intense! Richard luckily got it all on video, I can'twait to post it here (it'll probably have to be after we get home, since internet is so slow here) After that, it started pouring, and wehad to cut our safari short. We went back and it rained for the restof the night.

The next morning, we had to leave to go home, but on our drive out ofthe park, we saw some monkeys on the road and in a tree close to theroad! THEN, we saw a lion in the distance, tracked it down, andeventually, it came onto the road right in front of us, and 'escorted'us for awhile - it just walked down the road in front of us. We wereso excited, although we were a little disappointed we didn't get agood picture of him. But to our delight, just ahead, we saw two morelions just sitting on the side of the road, looking so relaxed. Oneof them was literally right next to our car. After awhile, he got up,crossed the road right in front of us, and got his buddy to get up andgo with him. It was great! We were sooo happy we got to see that! Ifeel like we were given these little tender mercies, all throughoutour trip - even though seeing animals up close isn't really all thatimportant, it meant a lot to all of us to be able to see them that closely.