Chillin' with the Pumbas

Time for the blog about the safari!!!

But first some thoughts about life here,
For those of you who don't know we are really living IN Africa... I look out my window in the morning and see a cow and chickens running around, as well as people cooking outside and picking plantains to eat. Eric and I have to boil water to drink it and are the only white people in this whole town.

Also, pineapple here is amazing for lack of a better word! We figure its because they don't farm it here, it just grows wild, so there aren't any pesticides and the soil isn't over farmed like it is on plantations. I wish I could take some home but I don't think they would let me.

Another thing is people here love Obama. Once anyone finds out we are American we get so many questions about him. We even get them from other tourists from around Europe.




So back to safari talk,
Thursday we had school but I wasn't feeling well, I'm pretty sure it was because I got dehydrated, so I stayed home and got better. Everyone in the neighborhood wanted to diagnose what I had and almost had me convinced I had malaria. Even though I knew I didn't, people were insistent and it made me nervous. That night after I was feeling better Eric and I left for the Backpackers Hostel because we were leaving for our trip early the next morning. After taking advantage of the free internet there and having some Nile Special Lager we had an early night.

Friday morning we were up early for the long drive to Mercheson Falls Park. At this point, the circle of life from the Lion Kind began to get stuck in my head. The safari ended up only being Eric and I, along with another guy named Carl from Norway. He was really interesting to talk to because he was on his last week of a 6 month trip around the world. Many hours later after entering the park we stopped to view the top of the falls. The fall was quite amazing, we could hear them from about a mile away and when we got there we were getting wet from all the spray. (pictures to come, but even those don't quite show the magnitude of the falls). After viewing the falls we drove to the Red Chili Rest camp where we were to be staying (seeing many groups of Baboon's along the side of the road along the way), and had dinner overlooking the Nile River. At the camp sight there was a group of Wart Hogs or Pumbas as the call them here, as do I thanks to my love for the Lion King, and that being the theme of my weekend.
We got to meet some other tourists on the same safari from different companies here, one of the most memorable was Dave, a man volunteering in Kampala who was HIV positive himself, and came here to use that to help get through to some kids. He was a truck driver from Mississippi, and fit the stereotypical southern mold. He had gone through a lot of hard times and had so many interesting stories. One of the most interesting being his experience with Hurricane Katrina, because when it hit he was in jail for dealing meth and had an amazing story of how the prisoners were treated during a crisis when all the legitimate law enforcement had abandoned the city, at points they were left to die as the jails flooded, a remarkable story that I could never do justice retelling but it really opened my eyes to some things that go on, even in our own country.

Saturday was the big day. We woke up super early for the game drive around the savanna. We crossed the Nile by ferry in out small van and proceeded onto the plains. Here I saw so many more animals than I could of imagined! Right off the ferry we saw a group of hippos lounging in the river, then along the drive we saw elephants, giraffes, buffalo, antelopes, monkeys, wart hogs, and birds. Not to be disappointed, our driver did a little off trekkinng (driving off the road, highly illegal in the park), and we got super close to some giraffes, and dangerously close to some LIONS! There were a few other cars that had discovered the lions as well, but we saw a mother lion and her two cubs lounging in a bush, dining on a baby antelope she had recently killed. The pictures are amazing, and we have some video as well, where you can literally hear the bones of their dinner cracking as she eats it. Eric and I are still in shock we got to see this and get that close!
After stopping for a snack of pineapple, my fave! We drove back to the river crossing and back to The Red Chili for lunch. After lunch we went to take a cruise on the Nile up to the base of the falls. On the way we saw a ridiculous amount of hippos, and even some crocodiles! The cruise was great until it started storming and we were all soaking wet! Quite a cool experience but extremely uncomfortable. Eventually we made it to the base of the falls and tied the boat up to an island in the middle of the river and some of us got to climb out onto the rock, fun but if we had fallen we would of been swept away by the ridiculously rough current. We eventually cruised back to camp and spent the rest of the evening having dinner and sharing stories with other travelers.

Sunday was another early morning as we headed out of the Chimp Trek in the rain forest. This was cool getting to search for chimpanzees in the African Jungle, and I mean search. We definitely trekked as our guide created our own paths by chopping through brush with his machete and we were deep in the jungle. We even got to see a whole lot of chimps, which was a luxury being that many groups don't even see any. I ended the trek covered in mud and scratches but I couldn't help but be grateful making it back. Never being too scared or feeling like I was in actual danger, I did think of the rebel groups like the LRA, who have made appearances in this jungle, given the park is so close to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The night before I had heard about a group of American tourists being taken a few years before. But with that said don't worry everyone we are still alive and safely back in Kampala!

Monday we were back in school! After a late start Eric and I made it to class and I decided today I would teach about Marketing. I had some good reactions, and some bad, but overall I felt the kids learned something, and a few came up to me later in the day asking if I had any marketing books and wanting to know more, so the made me really happy. After classes a few of the girls and I were talking and many had some interesting questions about things like relationships and sex, it was cool they felt comfortable enough to talk to me about those things and I felt I got through to them. Another thing a few of the girls expressed is that they wanted a pen pal from the US. So as of now I am looking at maybe getting the school here connected with a school in the states to set up a pen pal exchange. I'm not exactly sure if it would work given they don't all have access to computers here, or the ability to pay for postage on snail mail, but its something I'm going to look into.

That's all for now, I hope you enjoyed the tales of Safari, and I can't wait to show you all the pictures and video!

Love and miss you all!!! Still having an amazing time, but can't wait to be home!