LaSERIO Uganda: Days 14 and 15

Day 14

Today was a long travel day from Kabubbu to Queen Elizabeth National Park, so we set off at 6.30am to avoid rush hour around Kampala. We made good time and mostly everyone was asleep for the first leg until we reached our stop at the Equator.

We posed for photos, standing in both the northern and southern hemispheres, and then had a demonstration of the Coriolis effect in water at 0 degrees latitude and then each side to see it drain in opposite directions. Sarah is a Geography teacher back home, but after so many hours travelling, she thought better of trying to explain to me how this works! Conveniently there was a craft market for souvenir shopping - we even managed to find a couple of Ugandan flag patches for our camp blankets!

There were more hours driving on the bus for sleeping, listening to music, interesting toilet stops... and then lunch in Mbarara. We arrived at our lodge in the evening after a whole day on the road, on some bumpy and dusty tracks and with some of the highway still being built as we drove through. We were happy to arrive at sunset to see the amazing views from the resort across the Rift Valley before the light faded at 7.30pm.

Day 15

After a change to our schedule, we were up early again (5:30am alarm!) and after breakfast headed into the national park. We met park ranger Matthew who was our guide for the day and provided information about the wildlife as we drove around spotting animals.

He asked everyone which animals were on their wish list and guaranteed us we would see elephants and hippos, but said we would need luck to spot one of 170 lions living in 1800 square km of the park.

Well, we saw lots of elephants along with buffalo, warthog, hippo, cob, water buck, baboons, monkeys and lots of different birds. After several hours, Matthew had word of a lion sighting so we drove to the area and were rewarded with three lions hanging out, laying down and occasionally getting up to move around - they were off in the distance, so the binoculars came in handy to see their faces. Then one of the lions started walking closer to the vehicles and climbed down the grass bank to cross the road close to where we had stopped. Everyone was thrilled and we were snapping away on our cameras and phones!