Mom's Visit - Part 2 - Safari

Sorry for two posts this week, but I have so many pictures to share from my mom's visit. On Sunday, we headed on a safari with my friend Prince's tour company called Trinity Tours. We spent two days at Queen Elizabeth National Park and then headed to Bwindi Impenetrable Forest for a day. It was quite a long drive (7 - 10 hours) to get to each place and then back to Kampala, but well worth it. In all of Africa, Uganda has the most variety of bird species and is second in number for variety of mammals. They also hold the largest population of mountain gorillas in the world. There are only about 880 of them left and 480 of them live in Uganda, the other 400 are found in Rwanda and Tanzania. Ill share some more random information that I learned along with stories from our trip below. Enjoy the pictures!

Kampala is literally just north of the equator, and both parks we went to are in the southern hemisphere

The view from our hotel room - its hard to see in the picture but there are about 15 elephants down there

The guy on the right is Prince our trusty driver and guide along with being the owner of the company we traveled with and the man on the left was our guide for one of our game drives

Our van had a nice sunroof so I rode with my head stuck out most of the time... I have bruises on my sides to show for it!

 ELEPHANTS

So there were LOTS and LOTS of elephants in the park. We saw in total 89 elephants in our 2 days there. They were very fun to spot, and we often ended up quite close to them. There are 2 fishing villages within the game park, and the people there deal with these animals on a regular basis. One man was on a BIKE going through the middle of the game park and came to the elephants we were watching. The elephant immediately began charging him and he ended up jumping off his bike and running into the bush. Thankfully the elephant stopped and we backed up to help the man, but I cannot imagine that being daily life. We also saw LOTS of baby elephants which were fun to see!

This is the elephant that charged the man... he watched the man for a long time

These elephants were out swimming - the little one on the right kept going all the way under the water

 

 

One of the highlights of our trip was a boat tour down the Kazinga Channel. We saw so much wildlife up close from the boat. I especially enjoyed the hippos! I had never seen a hippo besides at a zoo, and they were very fun to spot in the water.

Mom and I on the boat

 Hippopotamus

 So while I absolutely love the hippos, it is quite sad that they are the most dangerous animal to humans. As we drove into one of the fishing villages, the kids started telling Prince about how a hippo had tipped a canoe and they only found one man and the hippos had killed the other. They are very territorial. 

The hippos by the fishing village... they are maybe 10 feet from shore

The kids telling Prince what happened to the men in the canoe

 

At night hippos can travel up to 10 km in search of food, and they take the same path each night. Early in the morning you can see the hippos or sometimes at night you can see the hippos out of the water

Hippo paths up from the water

The hippo we spotted at night while looking for the lions (see below) and yes that is a house were guests stay behind the hippo!

Hippos seen in the morning still grazing

 Antelope

The light colored one is a Ugandan Kob  and the darker larger one is a Waterbuck

 Vultures

Apparently vultures help you spot lions as they normally hang out to feed on the lion's leftovers

 Buffalo

 Mongoose

 

 Monitor Lizard

One of these lived under our hotel room!!!!! It was HUGE!

 Monkeys

Black-and-White Colobus Monkey

Vervet Monkey - We see these even in Kampala

Baboon

Lions!!!!

 So one night we were at dinner, and just as we got our food our park ranger came to find us and tell us that he had just seen 5 lions quite near our hotel. We told him we had to finish our dinner and would come later. Well at 10:15 he called and said he had seen the lions again and we should come now. So my mom and I ran out to the car in our pajamas to find these two lions below

 

 

 In the southern region of the park, there are more trees. And the lions have adapted by learning to climb trees to find shade and to watch their prey. My mom spotted the lion below up in a fig tree.

 

Gorillas

One of the highlights of our trip was going hiking to find the mountain gorillas. It was about 2 hours of climbing a VERY VERY steep hill and we found the gorillas just over the top. They will only send 7 people in a group and the group is complete with a guide and 2 men with large guns. Once you find the gorilla family you are assigned to, you have one hour to watch the gorillas. It was so amazing. You are suppose to remain at least 7m from the gorillas, but the jungle was so dense that there was no chance of that. Most of the time we were less than 3m from the gorillas. One funny story is that the gorillas really enjoy red ants. Well, my mom did not tuck her pants into her socks like most of the other people in our group, and next thing we knew, she had ants in her pants and everyone was trying to help get them out!!!

The family we were assigned to had 7 members. We saw all of them. The nice thing is they send trackers ahead of you that find the gorillas and then help your guide find them. They also use a panga (machete) to hack down the jungle plants to make a path.

View from hotel #2, and the hill behind us is what we hiked to find the gorillas

This gorilla was called Malika - meaning angel

My mom with her porter, Patience. Patience helped carry her bag and help her up the super steep parts

Hiking down with our team... not sure you can tell how steep it is.

Foot of the Silverback (the largest and oldest male in the family)

Back to the bridge, we survived!

"The heavens are yours; the earth is also yours; the world and all that is in it, you have founded them"

Psalm 89:11

I hope you enjoyed the pictures. My mom and I had such a wonderful time. It really was just so encouraging to have her here and wonderful to be able to share with her what my life is like here.