Adventures in Africa: 7/7

7/7 After dodging the wild warthogs around my tent before I fell asleep, I woke up at 5:30am to catch the bus to the safari. We drove to the river and Sam, our driver, drove the van onto this crazy, we’ll call it, “carferry.” See picture. We hoped on with a prayer that we wouldn’t fall in along with men in army green uniforms with shotguns. I got very suspicious until we got to the other side and one of them hoped in our van and was like “hey guys, I’m a ranger for the UWA.” He carried the gun in case any of the animals threatened us so we were very happy to have him aboard. With a beautiful African sunrise in the background, we drove through the jungle and plains. One of our first sightings were 2 male lions walking right next to our van! It was insane. Words cannot describe. I learned that if you see a male lion by himself he was probably banned from his pride because otherwise he’d be with them. We also saw a ton of Antelope, Uganda kob, water buffalo (which chased one of the lions! Lions won’t attack the buffalo if they are by themselves,) giraffe, and warthog (pumbas.) We joked that we just really wanted to see an animal kill and eat another one to see the complete “circle of life.” The amount of Lion King references/puns made is quite sickening actually. All I can say about this safari is that you just have to go on one. It sounds like a phrase from the Wizard of Oz when I type it otherwise.

Carferry

Back at camp for lunch, we ate some amazing rosemary lemon chicken and played the card game “Cheat” (Americans call it B.S.) with Jenny and Georgina. They are two really sweet girls I met from England who collected 20,000 books at Edinborough for schools in the area. We left for our boat safari. Saw a ton of hippos, elephants, and birds. Also saw where one of Hemingway’s airplane crashes was. They named an area after him; did you know he had 3 crashes? Learned some Swahili (for you Jesse!) from our boat guide, Kenneth. Miawannaming kiboko! (I saw many hippos :) ) Back at camp practicing my Swahili, playing Trivial Pursuit with the group, eating cinnamon crepes and drinking some Smirnoff...ah life is good.