Saturday 24th August- Safari

We woke up at 5am to be on the sunrise safari but didn't see much bar more cob, some bucks and monkeys. Our van decided to play a joke on the van behind us by pretending we could see a lion. We suddenly stopped the van began pointing in the distance towards a group of cobs while pretending to take photos. We told the van behind us that there were lions under the tree to the right of the group and then they all started saying how they could see them and how amazing it was. Apparently there was a male and two females watching the Cob, even team leader Graeme (TLG) was claiming he could see them. We played along for 5 or so minutes more before announcing that there was nothing there and then driving off.  By 9 we had gone back to the campsite, packed up the tents and were on our way to a different part of the Park that we would be spending Saturday night at.

The journey was about an hour and half long, on the way we saw baboons on the road so we pulled over and Aggrey (my van’s driver) threw crisps at them. The baboons were huge and some of them had babies clinging to them. After watching them for a while we carried on down the road before coming to a huge lone elephant standing facing the road half submerged in the trees.

Before getting to the new campsite we got to a restaurant where I had pork and chips for roughly £5, the majority of everyone else had fish and chips. The meal was actually really good despite it taking about 45 minutes for the food to arrive. From the restaurant we drove through the safari to the campsite, along the way we saw more elephants. We must of seen roughly 20 of them just strolling around and eating, but we couldn't stay too long as we had a boat safari at 5pm.

On the boat we went along the lake to the opposite bank where we saw loads more hippos, fish eagles, cobs and lots of buffalos as well as some crocodiles.  A lot of the buffaloes we saw were ‘loser’ buffalo which meant that they were outcasts from their herds which explained why they were on their own; it also means that their time is running out because isolated animals don’t usually survive long.

After the boat safari we headed to a Ugandan 5 star hotel for our dinner. The meal was a really good buffet with fish and a lot of meat. After all the food that we had been having (not that it was bad) everyone was going mental for the food. I as well as a lot of others went up 7 or more times for food which annoyed some of the hotel residents, but we were hungry. After the meal we hung out in the bar for a bit where Pav decided to buy a £25 bottle of wine. Sometime later the vans arrived and took us to the camp site for bed.