Last Words

Five days more left in Africa. Five days until I board a plane back to the United States.  Sadly this will be my last blog in Africa.  The time that I have spent here has been amazing.  It was a once in a lifetime opportunity and I’m glad that I took, but all good things must come to an end (The Rolling Stones didn’t get the memo).  I have already taken all my final exams and finished all my papers.  School here is over for me; I am a free man.  Plus, I have only two more days with my family and my bags are already packed.  I am sad to be leaving.  I realized I was sad to leave when we went on our Safari.  There is just something about giraffes running through beautiful open fields that makes you not want to leave, but the time has come and I am happy to be leaving for home.  I have spent the last week thinking about what I am going to do when I get back to the United States and home.  I have already made a mental list of all the places where I am going to eat so hopefully I can start checking off that list as soon as I land.  It is going to be strange though, because the entire time I have been here the weather has been like summer with rain showers.  However, it is obviously super cold back in the U.S.  What a change that will be, but I like winter and it would be nice to be cold rather to be dripping sweat like a broken fire hydrant.  And, it is going to be Christmas!!!!  It is my favorite time of year pretty much. Also, I am pretty happy to be going home to my crazy family, my mother should be busy buying me presents (she is too kind), Lexy is probably singing her heart out with Andrea Bocelli (my sister is a super star!!!), and Lauren is probably kicking sheep (I love you Lauren you kick those sheep).  I am also excited for the next semester at Westmont.  I will beginning my new major in Art (with the intention of focusing on graphic design), and I got all of the classes that I wanted at all the times that I wanted.  It is going to be great.  Until then I shall be here, chilling in Uganda, eating matoke and making African burritos.  Hopefully you all have enjoyed my writings and even if you never go to Africa…at least I did.

   

           (My Mukono home-stay family)

Amazing African Safari

This past weekend I got to experience the majestic wonders and beauty of  African wildlife.  It was incredible!!!  I got to see so many crazy things!!!  Besides I always love the times when Africa reminds me of the Lion King (after all, for most Americans this movie has been their only source of knowledge about the appearance of Africa).  Sit back and enjoy the ride as I took you through my adventures (let’s be honest most of you reading this are now living vicariously through me…ah yes the world is as it should be):

Day 1

  

On Friday, we left early in the morning towards the Northern districts of Uganda and to our final destination at Murchison falls.  On the way there we stopped at this Rhino sanctuary which contains the majority of the rhinos in Uganda (there are eight in the sanctuary and only two in Uganda zoos which brings the number of rhino’s in Uganda to a grand total of 10 rhinos…yes they are endangered).  The rhinos were awesome but we caught them at a bad time because they were napping and they weren’t very lively.  This picture was taken during their few active moments (my camera zoom sucks so yes, we were extremely close like about 15 ft.).  Don’t worry though when they did stand up it was most certainly an experience (it scared the crap out of me).  It was funny Holly huddled behind our guides lol.  Chicken.  Anyway we arrived at the Murchison Falls wildlife park and set up camp (we stayed in these awesome tents).  It was pretty cool because we were exposed to wildlife before we even got into the park.  All around and throughout the camp were small herds of warthogs.  One even grabbed my friend Drew’s bag and tried to run off with it (Drew got it back though…hilarious).

  

Day 2

We woke up at 6:30am to go on a game drive through the park.  We had to get up this early so as to catch the ferry across the Nile where the game park is located.  The first thing we encountered as we stepped off the ferry (keep in mind that the safari hadn’t even begun) was a baboon that proceeded to steal this lady’s lunch.  Hilarious lol hehehe chuckle chuckle.

The baboons just liked to steal things basically as you will discover.  After laughing at the lady, we got into our safari vehicle which had a giant sunroof on it so we could stick our heads out as we drove along.  We then entered the park.  It was so beautiful.  There were so many endless fields of waving grass (it reminded me of Gladiator).  The first animals we saw were giraffes.  These are such majestic creatures; I just want to frolic with them in the sun all day long.  Oh and its hilarious when they run, just because…you wouldn’t understand.

 

The most exciting part of the day was when we got up close and personal with three lions.  We had been hoping we would see them because spotting them is difficult, but we got lucky.  We had spotted them early in the day but we weren’t able to get very close and by the time we did the lion had run off.  Well, as we were driving along our driver spotted a lion moving through some brush.  The van in front of us (which had our students in it; we were divided in two separate vehicles) went off the road towards the lion but turned around as soon as another vehicle came into view.  Our driver told us this was because their is a fine for being caught off of the roads, but he said, “I want you to get a good picture.”  As soon as the other vehicle was out of sight he took off towards where the lion was seen.  We all cheered him on because we wanted to see the lions up close, so we drive up and there is this male lion lying down chewing on this bone (he was like 15ft from our vehicle) and low and behold a lioness comes ups and sits down with him.  As, we were snapping away with our camera’s yet another lioness came out (pimp).  It was so cool.  There was just three lions chilling out.  After we took a few pictures we got out of there (all of this occurred within a matter of seconds).

Here are a few more of the animals we saw on that game drive:

After heading back and eating lunch (amazing I had a tropical burger, this means they just put pineapple on the side) we went on this boat tour to see the aquatic mammals and wildlife.  We saw hippos…

They spend like 17 hours in day in the water.  They have sensitive like Holly.  We saw a family of elephants by the waterside…

 

And distant/submerged forms of crocodiles…

 

We then hiked up to this incredible waterfall that feeds into the Nile…

 

Day 3

On the final day we had one more game drive before heading back to Mukono.  We saw many of the same animals as we did the first day but we did get to chase around a lion until it ran in front of our vehicle…

and then we ran into a herd of elephants…

 

Basically this was an amazing time and it was a nice break from school.  Only seven more days until I go home!! Here are a few more pictures that I liked enjoy: