Friday, July 2, 2010

African Safari at Murchison Falls

After a long and good work week it is fun for all of the volunteers to go on a weekend trip as a way to see the different areas of Uganda. This last week, many of us went to Murchison Falls National Park to go on a African Safari!

The first half of the trip consisted of a game drive. Our goal was to see the "Big Five", which are the lion, giraffe, elephant, rhino and the hippo. Our guide told us that it had been six days since anyone had spotted a lion. We must be doing something right because we not only saw one lion, but two! There were two male lions that walked right towards us on the road. They got so close it was actually kind of creepy. They stared intently at us and then sauntered off the road long enough to pass us and then they resumed their position. 

The other animals were found pretty easily. We didn't see any of the rhinos on the game drive becuase the only rhinos in the country are in a special reserve. When we visited the reserve however, we were able to get about 20 feet away on foot, for pictures! There have been three baby rhinos born in the reserve and one of them they named Obama because the mother was a white rhino from America and the father rhino was a black rhino from Kenya. Ha ha... they are so witty... 

The second half of the day was spent in a boat down the Nile. This is where we saw a ton of hippos and Nile Crocodiles.  At camp, we stayed in tents that had two beds in each. There were many warthogs, or "pumba's" as we liked to call them that liked to walk through the camp scavaging for food. All in all the day was a huge success.

Jessie Jensen signing off saying Waylaba... 

 

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