After 12 hours of driving we have arrived at the Budongo EcoLodge and just finished dinner on the porch. With ants crawling on the floor, geckos on the wall and a hyrax sceaming off in the woods (remember Dr A's imitation at All School?), the crew is a little skittish about all the creepy crawlies, but I am loving it! The drive yesterday took us from the mountains past endless miles of small plots farmed exclusively by hand. Today after 11 hours of seeing only simple tools as farm equipment, I finally saw a tractor. In fact, everything seems to be done by hand in Uganda: sawing trees and metal beams, sanding planks of wood, etc. Today we drove past tea plantations, small 10 building towns, traditional houses made of mud and sticks, savanna, endless miles of children waving and coming upon a Wildlife Service truck that had slid off the road into a ditch blocking our path and requiring us to off-road it by driving across the front lawn of a school to get past the truck- much to the delight of the townspeople!
Probably one the most exciting and beautiful parts of the trip was yesterday and first thing this morning at Queen Elizabeth Park where we first checked into our cottages perched on a cliff above the savanna and had lunch on the patio under a thatched roof. Breathtaking views of the recently burned plain where Daniel somehow saw a group of banded mongoose scavenging amidst the burned vegetation below. The cottages were idyllic- a safari paradise. Then a game drive into the park where we saw Ugandan kob, warthogs, olive baboons, waterbuck, a giant eagle eyed owl, buffalo and a pride of 10 lions napping next to a herd of kob frozen as they contemplated moving past the lions. In the drive back somehow our guide, Tony, spotted a lone elephant off the side of the road- while trying to miss one of the many potholes. The two vans stopped to watch and the elephant decided to cross the road right between the two vans! This morning the drive north started by driving through the park where we happened upon a whole family of elephants next to the road.
Tomorrow brings us the Muchison Falls game drive, Nile cruise and hike as well as adventure we can only imagine!
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