Safari Time!

What's a teacher to do when she has several weeks off of school for Christmas, and she's living in the pearl of Africa? Go on a safari, of course! 

(Fun fact for fellow word enthusiasts out there. Safari in Swahili means "trip" or "journey." So if you went to the beach, the mountains, or the grocery store, you went on a safari. In a manner of speaking.)

One of the families from our school was planning to go camping at a few different parks, and kindly invited me along. Jackie Bell, the first and second grade teacher at Acacia, also came, along with a few other friends from their church. Our first destination after leaving Kampala was the equator. We stopped and had a lovely cup of coffee at the equator, served in Tim Hortons coffee cups. I'm fairly certain the nearest Tim Hortons is many thousands of miles away. Hmmmmm...

When we arrived at Lake Mburo national part, we saw animals right off. The zebra even greeted us on the road before we even entered the park. There were tons of "deer" variations, warthogs that were affectionately dubbed "bacon" by the children, angry cape buffalo, crazy looking eland, and friendly zebra. Although we never managed to catch one for the Neeleys to take home and train. 

We set up our tents right by the beautiful lake, complete with gorgeous sunsets and musical hippos. It was wild how close the animals were to us. There was always a warthog or baboon hanging around eating something. We had to watch our campsite pretty vigilantly. A warthog stole an empty box, a bunch of monkeys stole a whole loaf of bread, and I was half afraid the cranky looking old baboon was going to steal our youngest camper. Creepy baboons. 

In this picture you can see two hippos surfacing in the water. From that point of view they don't seem so big, but at night when they came out and grazed all around the campground it's another story. Those things are massive! Although we did see one baby that was about goat-sized. That was pretty adorable.

 We went on an early morning drive, and had a spectacular view of the part from this lookout.

This was our group of intrepid adventurers.

 Or it actually might be more correct to call this group the intrepid adventurers. With our awesome skull we found. And a little bit of attitude from the sole boy of the crew. 

It was Ms. Bell's birthday, so there was a celebratory "Gangam Style" dance around the campfire to mark the occasion. I must say, a three year old's take on Psy's dance is pretty entertaining. 

After a few days in Lake Mburo, the Neeley's and I continued on to Queen Elizabeth national park. Although we were not successful in our search for tree climbing lions, which were supposedly very easy to see, we did manage to find some pretty cool animals. 

 Most notable was our awesome sighting of a leopard. Hard to see, but it is right dead center in this photo, in the tree. We watched it napping for quite awhile before it got down out of it's tree. There were three impala that we were sincerely hoping would become dinner. Morbid as it may be, wouldn't that have been awesome! But, alas, the leopard was apparently not feeling very hungry and although it stalked the impala, it let them get away. We were still pretty ecstatic about seeing a leopard that close though.  

 Another great savanna sunset. 

We also saw several different groups (packs/prides/pods?) of elephants in the park. At one point we came around a corner and surprised an already riled up elephant that snorted at us quite a bit and looked a bit scary. Especially since several members of our group were perched precariously on the roof rack and wouldn't have fared well in an elephant close encounter. 

The place where we camped near Queen Elizabeth was pretty spectacular. This was the main pool, which had a water slide down to a lower pool. Both pools have a fantastic, sprawling view of the savanna below.  

Pretty good way to spend Christmas break, no?