Day 94 – Game drive and boat cruise
We got up relatively early for our game drive, only to find that the ‘hot’ shower was cold. We braved it and were very awake for breakfast. They were offering a full English breakfast, but J stuck with fruit and S had some baked beans, mushrooms and fruit. Dona had the full breakfast. We then headed out for our game drive at Queen Elizabeth park. The park is 1,950 square kilometres. Despite the size of the park, there are less than 150 known lions and 130 known leopards in the park. Our chances of seeing either were not great. Interestingly, the park extends into the DRC. However, unlike humans, the animals can cross between the two without a visa or a negative PCR test.
After we arrived at the park checkpoint, we were encouraged to bring one of the park rangers with us on our game drive as a guide. As we were told you cannot go off road in the park, we were concerned that we wouldn’t see very much. We were pleasantly surprised. J’s biggest goal was to see a leopard. We got to see one up close in the daylight, drinking from a pond and taking refuge from the heat in the shade. The ranger even let us go offroad so S might be able to see it. She loaned him her binoculars and he thinks he spotted it.
We saw some new animals we had not previously seen, including a forest buffalo, marshal eagle and a proper viewing of the Ugandan kobs. We also saw a couple of other cool things, including a massive herd of over 200 cape and forest buffalo, which were apparently interbreeding, a herd of Ugandan kobs leaping across the grassland, and a family of warthogs with tiny babies which the guide estimated to be a month old. We also got to get out of the vehicle to go up to the edge of a lake, where there were two schools of hippos. We were within 10 metres of the hippos but were not in danger as they don’t like to get out of the water during the day. We also saw a lot of waterbucks. We’d seen the occasional waterbuck in Kenya, but not this many. Apparently the waterbuck has a gland which secretes a nasty tasting substance into the waterbuck’s flesh when they are threatened, so the cats don’t like to eat them. The lions here prefer the Ugandan kobs and warthogs.
After the game drive, we returned to the lodge for lunch. On the way back to the lodge, Dona stopped by another roadside stall so J could taste some freshly roasted plantain. The plantain was hot and the outer skin of the plantain had crisped up nicely over the fire.
After lunch, we headed back out for a boat trip on the Kazinga channel, which connects Lake George to Lake Edward. The wildlife along the lake was amazing. We saw a number of new animals and birds, including a monitor lizard, crocodiles, sea eagle, long-tailed cormorant, hamerkop, great pelican, great egret, palm-nut vulture, kingfisher, black-winged stilt, sandpiper and a black-crowned night heron. There were many others, but we can’t remember their names. Apparently Uganda is home to 620 species of birds. We saw elephants bathing, eating and drinking in the water. At one point they started to trumpet and make other menacing noises to scare us off. The nearby school of hippos was none to pleased and they also moved on, grunting and snorting along the way. The amount of animal noises was impressive. We also got to see a very rare albino hippo. The albino hippo has pink skin which is extremely sensitive to the sunlight and they almost never come out of the water during the day. Once the ride was over, we met Dona and J noticed a massive marabou stork sitting on top of the building next to us. J got to see it up close before it flew off. It is a massive bird and a very strange-looking creature. We went back to the lodge to relax while Dona went to look for a new air conditioning fan belt. Apparently the mechanic who came to fix it while we were on our boat trip brought the wrong belt.
We headed back to Mazike for dinner. Dinner was a roast chicken leg for J and a vegetable rice dish for S. We sat by the fireplace for a while and then headed off to bed.
