Lions, a black eye, offspring and a boat trip in Uganda.

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Uganda day 3
Black eye, lions and a boat safari in Uganda

So I have a black eye. I was bending down to plug something in last night and banged it on the bed post. This is the story Claire has told me to tell you….
It bled for a short while last night and has gone purple this morning. Pretty standard stuff for me.
I still managed to get up at 5:30 though as we were off on a morning game drive. We were due to leave at 7 and breakfast started at 6:30 but there was no sign of Zed by quarter to so the lodge guy went and knocked on his door.
We set off a few minutes late and Claire managed to stay calm by saying it was Africa time. At home I’m the one getting her out on time! But there are cats at home and no lions for her to attempt to see I suppose.
The car started first time thankfully as there was no room to push it again to bump start it. The roof was raised and we set off back into QE2 park. Claire had 5 varieties of camera on the go so she was very ready.
Before we got there I spotted a hippo wandering not too far away so we stopped to take pictures of that. Then I spotted a very distant lonely elephant but the selfish git was too far away to photograph. Then we spotted a lonely buffalo. What was going on today with all these solitary animals??
We drove to the park entrance and checked in again before speeding back out again. The reason? Lions! The guides were in touch with each other and sure enough we soon came across a number of trucks alongside the road and some lions not too far away. And not lonely.
Even the one with a limp wasn’t left behind and I think the nearby kobs would definitely have got away from her. The highlight though was a very small lion cub who we managed to get some shots of before all of them hid behind a large bush.
So now we went back to the park where a few more vans of khaki-people had gathered to compare slacks and stringed hats. The guy with flip-flips and socks was arguing about who was the most trendy with the guy with socks and sandals so we left them to it.
The park is huge and very open but still the elephants managed to avoid detection. In fact we had seen more interesting animals from outside the park than we did inside. We saw plenty of buffalo, waterbucks, kobs and warthogs with only vultures being something we hadn’t seen from outside. You can’t beat seeing vultures circling above you though and some were on the ground clearing up after a recent kill.
We stopped at some toilets where there were also a few stalls that we bought a couple of souvenirs from. From there we could see some salt flats which were where we were heading next.
We had a very interesting talk about how they get salt from the crater whilst also taking pictures of some very distant flamingoes. I bought a couple of packs of the salt as apparently it helps the local community and, I’ll definitely be using it.
Because of how irritating the salt is people have to be careful about standing in the salt flats. Women work in the shallower ones but must wear something to protect their private parts. In the deeper ones only men can work there and they have to wear condoms to protect their dangly bits. Imagine walking round with a condom on all day! Apparently they don’t make much money either so I think I’ll stick with what I do thanks.
We then headed back to our accommodation stopping off to photograph a very defintely male baboon sitting on a road sign. Which reminds me that we had also seen a vervet monkey earlier who was sat on the very top of a distant tree.
We had lunch back at our lodge and discussed plans for tomorrow. Somehow we have moved things around so we have a free afternoon…..we are currently trying to rectify that. imagine having an afternnon with no activities!? Crazy! It is currently an hour until we go on our boat trip and we are getting restless…..
Oh yeah….and the exhaust is hanging off our car… Zed is getting it fixed while we are on the boat trip and hopefully he is getting the starting problem sorted too…..
Note: He didn’t. We’ll come back to that.
We set off to the boat trip and Claire plucked up the courage to ask if anything had been sorted for tomorrow afternoon and thankfully it has. We are doing another game drive, in another park I think. Phew! The tension was relieved.
The boat sat 16 but there were only 4 of us aboard as an Italian couple from our lodge were already there. Our guide was called Innocent and the boat driver (??) had a name too. Innocent said it was a guarantee that we would see hippos….
Now we’ve been on boat trips in other countries and they promise you loads and you see nothing or next to nothing so we weren’t that hopeful. We were on a lake by the way and the lake has a name too.
As we had been walking to the jetty we had seen a naked guy bathing in the lake. In this lake there are snakes (dangerous), crocodiles (very dangerous) and hippos (really dangerous) so why was the guy bathing, naked, in it? Because they don’t listen apparently.
This guy survived and had put some clothes on by the time we boated past him.
So, animals. Did we see any at all? Yes. Did we see more than we expected? Hell yes
We started with buffalo and later saw a whole herd of about 40, nearby was the first of many crocodiles and hippos were pretty much everywhere. I can see why they guarantee seeing them. In one shot I got hippos, buffalo, crocodiles and baboons which was pretty special.
For twitchers we saw a number of sea eagles, cormorants, something to do with a hammer and hundreds of pied kingfishers. Amongst a number of others…..sorry, bird names aren’t really my thing….although I do like seeing different ones than we see back home. The bigger and/or more colouful the better.
At one point we sped across the lake as there was a large family of elephants at the water’s edge. It was miles closer than we had seen them so far and they even had small calves with them. A lot of the animals have offspring at the moment and we saw some tiny warthogs later and some baby crocodiles.
We also saw a giant warthog, a vervet monkey and a monitor lizard so pretty damned good!
We were out there a couple of hours and saw far more animals than all our time on game drives inside Queeny Park.
And then we got back to the car and the exhaust had been fixed so we got in and…..it wouldn’t start…. And it was pointed uphill. Behind us was the building of the boat company. Surely there wasn’t enough room to bump start it in reverse….. With centimetres to spare, there was, but damn it was close. Apparently a mechanic has told Zed that nothing can be done which sounds unlikely. And shouldn’t the safari company send another vehicle, if they have one of course?
Back at the lodge we had a couple of hours before dinner so Zed was planning to go and get the car washed….if it will start I presume…
Dinner was at 7 and was another 3-courser and all very nice. We had some interesting chats with Zed about democracy which neithervof our countries really have, men cheating on women and arranged marriages amongst other things.
Someone came back to our room to show us how the shower works and on the way we saw lots of waterbucks and an elephant. As you do.
Tomorrow we get to wake up at 5am so we know we’re on holiday!

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