Life with MK: Game drive (6/11/2013)

First of all, last night I had to wake up to go to the bathroom again around 11pm. It gets dark early so we go to bed early. Anyways, I walked outside my room and looked towards the bathroom with my headlamp and the hippo was also walking towards the bathroom. Luckily it just walked on by and in was able to still get there! Never thought I'd have to be on such a careful hippo watch in my life!

This morning we woke up quite early in order to start our game drive through Murchinson Falls. We had to take a car ferry across the Nile and then we started safari-ing. We saw a ton of animals and it was really cool! We saw lots of bushbucks, hardebeast, duikers, waterbucks, two elephants, tons of giraffes (25 at one place!), a monkey, some warthogs, more hippos, herds of buffalo, a couple hornbills, and some other birds. It was pretty cool to see all the animals and once again I got some awesome pictures. We didn't see the lions this morning which was a little sad, but I'm sure I will see some at some point on my trip this summer.

After the game drive we stopped at a really nice safari lodge on that side of the Nile. It had beautiful facilities and a large pool with a swim up bar. It even had wifi, but of course it was the only time this whole week that my phone has been out of my purse. Figures. We had some fresh passion fruit juice there and relaxed of a bit before heading back to out side of the river. When we went down to the car ferry we had to wait over an hour, so we had some trail mix and read some of Dr. Girodani's wife Uganda guide book and some people danced to music being p,ahead by a group of locals. We also saw a bunch of baboons there while we were waiting. The ferry eventually decided it was time and we got on and went back to Red Chilli Camp, where we rested for a few hours, showered, and I listened to some music.

We met up around 5pm to head to Nile Safari Lodge for dinner. It was maybe 10-15 minutes away for Red Chilli Camp and it is an ecolodge. Molly would like that. We walked around and saw the lodge a bit and it looked really nice. They fill a shower bucket with heated water above your shower and have solar lights and its all very green. By one of the cabins there were even a whole family of monkeys! They were so cute until they started coming a little too close (but really they were still cute I was just nervous, haha). We walked down to the Nile and then saw the pool before heading back to the deck area to have a drink (mmm Fanta) on the porch overlooking the Nile. We eventually had dinner there in their little outdoor restaurant that was mostly candle lit. Actually, every single meal we have had has been outdoors since I got here. They only time we are really ever inside is when we are sleeping or getting ready for something. Anyways, I had a delicious dinner of beef and sweet potatoes (these are not like our sweet potatoes, they are more like potatoes that are very sweet). At the end of dinner we also found out that the manager of the ecolodge is a Michigan grad. Small world! I though Stanford had a pretty crazy and large international alumni network, but my experiences with Michigan alum is starting to rival that.

On the way home from dinner our driver told us a story about when he was driving back to his village one night around Christmas in his pickup with his kids in the back. As they drove under a tree a leopard jumped down and just missed the car and started chasing them. He had to turn off the car lights so the leopard would stop and they got away. It was nuts! I'm glad that t hasn't happened to us! When we got back to the Red Chilli Camp low and behold the hippo was back in action, munching away on the apparently yummy grass at the site. We grabbed our tooth stuff and went to the bathroom to brush our teeth and when we came back the hippo was right outside our door so we couldn't go back. We waited for a few minutes for it to move and then we went back in, but the hippo hung outside our door for quite a while after we got back in. Needless to say we didn't leave our Banda again! The hippo is quite awesome though!

Tomorrow we will go to the top of Murchinson Falls and then head back to Kampala to start some training for the actual projects we will be doing. Safari time is coming to an end, but it has been great!