Our Morning Game Drive

After the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary, we arrived at Paraa Safari Lodge in Murchison Falls National Park, settled into our rooms, and ate dinner on the outside patio overlooking the Nile River. While getting ready for dinner, we heard children in the next door rooms whooping and hollering...when went out on our balcony there was a big baboon right below us. I went back in to change, and went back out a few minutes later in response to even louder excitement: the baboon was walking along the balcony railing of Chuck and Kristen's and Mama Conche's rooms!

After dinner we watched a group of musicians and dancers around a bonfire outside. I don't know how it happened but Kristen and I were pulled up from our front row seats to join them! And thankfully Chuck recorded the whole thing on video (it was actually really fun). We requested "wake up knocks" at 6:00AM for the next morning then went to bed. In the AM we grabbed breakfast, then hopped into our mega Land Cruiser by 6:45. The sun was just rising - our guide told us that the sun rises very quickly here and he was so right - in the blink of an eye the sun was shining above our heads. Mama Conche opted to relax at Paraa while we went out on our drive and got a lot of reading in while we were out.

Our 4 hour game drive took us all over the park and we saw TONS of animals. There were just so many antelope-type animals: Ugandan kob, oribi, bushbuck, waterbuck, Jacksons hartebeest, topi and more. Then came the big game - herds of water buffalo, African elephants, and giraffes. Oh yeah and tons of warthogs, guinea fowl, and a bazillion different types of other birds. When we stopped to observe a group of kobs, we noticed a very small baby whose legs were a little wobbly still. Our guide told us that it was probably only a few hours old!

Our Land Cruiser, driver and guide were great. The top of our Cruiser popped up so we stood up pretty much the whole time while we drove all around. We drove past Lake Albert and saw the Democratic Republic of Congo across the way. But unfortunately we didn't find any lions - Murchison has an estimated 150 lions, but they had gone to a part of the park without roads so we couldn't see them. Oh well - next time. :)

After returning to our hotel, we took very much needed showers, ate lunch, then headed down to our boat ride on the Nile!