Monday, June 29, 2009

Queen Elizabeth National Park

On Tuesday, we broke camp early for our long drive west. In the afternoon, we crossed the equator again and returned to the southern hemisphere.



We stopped briefly to debunk the myth about water draining clockwise south of the equator and to take some pictures before pressing on into the mountains of western Uganda and finally arriving in Queen Elizabeth National Park. We settled in for what turned out to be a sleepless night.

I awoke at1:30am to some unusually heavy breathing only to find it wasn’t Katie but rather an elephant literally standing at the door of our tent. The bush next to the tent was apparently good eating and the ellie proceeded to munch and drop debris on our tent for an hour before the herd moved through the campsite. Next came the hippos grunting and snorting followed by the cackling hyenas around 4am.

The animals must have been more tired than we were because we saw relatively nothing during our morning game drive. Our mid-day siesta was followed by an afternoon boat ride up the Kazinga Channel which was teaming with birds, buffaloes, elephants, crocs and hippos (Our boat actually bumped into a submerged hippo at one point!)



We returned safely to shore and enjoyed some local brews as we watched our last Ugandan sunset.

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