Saulters in the {BIG} City: Big Safari

After our evening game drive I took a hot shower (while standing! Yes!!) and went to bed. We started the next morning with an early breakfast overlooking dawn in the Great Rift Valley. I had a feast fit for a king with porridge, a poached egg with toast to sop it up, and a platter of fresh fruit. The cherry on top, though, was the thermos of piping hot black coffee I requested the night before. I can’t remember if I’ve talked about this yet, but Ugandans seem to not like bitter things. Ugandan coffee is about 1/5 a cup of coffee mixed with 4/5 cup of hot milk, with at least two teaspoons of sugar. Tea is done the same way. I’ve tried multiple times to like them but can’t convince myself … kind of like goat meat.

Anyway, after breakfast our driver Charles took us out to the park for 4 hours of “game hunting”. I had my head hanging out the roof most of the time and consequently got a bit of a tan, which is exciting after the Virginia winter. We spotted kobs, bush bucks, buffalo, elephants, and finally a LION! As we pulled up we noticed the kobs (lion food) seemed a bit skiddish. We slowly drove around looking for predators, and Charles with his keen eyes spotted a male lion sleeping in a cactus tree! We offroaded a bit and pulled up within 20 feet of the lion in the tree!!! It was sleeping soundly (somehow) curled up in the branches of a cactus. It never woke up the whole time we were there, but did super cute things like scratch its nose and rub its face against a branch. I really wanted to pet it, but withheld.

After watching the lion for a while, all that coffee set in. Unfortunately we were in the middle of nowhere and there could be a lion behind every bush! Fortuitously we “happened upon” a little shack in the middle of the park that (1) just so happened to have a bathroom and (2) just so happened to have a lot of souvenirs. I’m sure the driver found it on purpose, but regardless we really had to go. And when you really have to go, you use whatever bathroom is around – even a pit latrine. I had visions of past bad memories of a trip to Gatlinburg with my family when I tried to use a port-a-pot and wasps flew out of the seat. A similar thing happened here, but I latched the door shut and just went with it. Everything turned out ok! Then we were super grateful to the ladies who owned the place and had to buy an item or two from them (Reid and VK – you have a present coming)!

After the latrine and some more game watching, it was time for lunch. We drove quite a way across the park to Lake Edward, and enjoyed a very fancy lunch at a very fancy lodge that we very much could not afford to stay at. It was full of muzungus (while I’m proud to say our lodge had some Ugandans staying there) and had many leather bound books and smelled of rich mahogany. I had an awesome tilapia (whole, with eyes and everything) and we cooled off a while before heading down to the lake for a boat tour. The tour was led by a guy named Daniel who was encyclopedic in his knowledge of the mammals and birds lining the shore. Afterward we headed back to the lodge and watched the sunset over the valley before enjoying our dinner with Charles.