We have just returned from a lovely and much appreciated few days away at Queen Elizabeth National Park. After three weeks of virtually no city water, it was great to escape to a beautiful part of the country and enjoy some days at a lodge and a game drive.
On the way to the park, we happened upon this lodge that came highly recommended as a great place to stop for lunch. The lodge overlooked an absolutely beautiful view of a crater lake that sits at the foot of the Rwenzori Mountains.
We had fun exploring the lodge and area while we waited for our food.
We rented this beast of a mutatu for the week. It was a blessing to have the extra space in the car, but we got pulled over so.many.times. Sometimes the police would see that we were mzungu and just wave us on while laughing, sometimes they took Eric's license and examined it carefully to see if he was legally allowed to drive the van. One police pulled us over on the way there and then again on the way back. The second time he said, "Ah! How was the park? What did you bring for me?" haha!
Here is a small smattering of some of the animals we saw:
A water buck:
Wart-hogs are always fun to watch:
Uganda Kob:
But by far, our favorite sighting was the lions. We drove for so many hours trying to find lions. At one point, we saw some, but they were so far away from the road that you couldn't even really tell what they were. We had all but given up, when we happened upon these guys resting just 10 meters from the road!
The boat drove straight through all the groups of hippos.
One of the hippos was mama to this little baby. He was so cute in a hippo sort of way!
Crocodiles:
Fish Eagles:
A beautiful stork:
Then we looked down river and saw these elephants. We had seen a few elephants on our game drive Most of them were hidden in the tall grasses. But the boat driver took us straight up to this group.
After our boat ride, we went on a drive on a horrible road around several craters. But even though the roads were rough, the views were beautiful. Some of the craters were filled with trees. This one was filled with sulfur and salt water.
After our game drive, the kids were eager to get back to our lodge and go swimming. The lodge has two kiddie pools...an upper one and lower one that are connected by a tiled slide. A very fun-but-would-never-be-seen-in-America-thanks-to-lawsuits slide. They were having a blast until Benaiah fell against the rock wall and cut his forehead quite badly. It wasn't a horrible wound, but it was obvious that it needed stitches or super glue. The problem is, we don't just go to any clinic here...some aren't safe, some aren't really equipped to help well. The bigger cities where we could have gone were a few hours away and it was almost dark, so driving out wasn't really an option. Thankfully, the manager had a new tube of super glue and was able to be convinced that it really is okay to super glue wounds. She went from thinking we were absolutely crazy to coming to watch me fix it, so she would know how to do it next time. Benaiah screamed and squinted his eyes right when I dropped in the glue, so it didn't come together in the most beautiful way (he will have a groovy scar), but we were thankful that it worked.
And Benaiah is thankful to be able to tell everyone who will listen, "The day I met a lion was the day I got this wound."
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