The Safari begins - Lake Mburo

The first day we drove towards to the first park and crossed the equator. Then, four hours west of Kampala and fifty miles across roads sometime like goat tracks we got to the first lodge. Uganda comes at one quickly, we saw warthogs, impala, and a topi on the way in. After the bone-jaring road, suddenly, there on the top of a large rocky hill is a solar powered, total service (need a babysitter?), organically designed lodge where we slept in tents. The pool, into which an occasional mischievous vervet monkey snuck a drink, overlooked about a hundred square miles of the park. Later in the day, Kate, Lendell and Naomi hiked down to a blind and watched eland, zebras, mongeese and warthogs gather around a salt lick. We had a scrumptious three meals (i.e. appetizer at dinner was two spinach and feta filled samosas on a bed of home grown salad greens.) At dinner, we walked down from the lodge to see a large family of bushbabies, primates with koala-monkey faces and raccoon sized tails, who come down out of the trees for banana snacks. Once zipped into our tents (people walk you back as there are raffish buffalo know to frequent the trails) we could enjoy a view of night a hundred or so square miles of the park, no lights, just animal sounds and us. The next morning at 6:30 we mounted an open land rover with a driver for a game drive. Hundreds of zebra, water buffalo en masse, all sorts of impala, eland and topis, warthogs, baboons and other monkeys. We couldn’t believe how close we were, existing just within their habitat just meters away. The birds were everywhere including what we all named our favorite, the lilac breasted roller. After a full English breakfast we packed and headed off for a four hour drive to the next park. Naomi is a trooper through all these long drives, and insisted upon saying “bye bye” to all the zebras and impala as we left the park, then to the kids herding the cattle outside the park. (as told by Moo Moo)