Murchison Falls National Park Land and Water Safari

I suck at keeping up with this blog, but oh well 😂. I write bullet points of each day in my notes but then can never find time to put my thoughts together and write them in the blog 😂. This post is over a week overdue, oops!

In order to see some of the animals at the right time, we had to leave for the safari by 5am. So, I woke up around 4:15, and we made eggs for breakfast and had coffee. Our safari driver had stayed over night, so that he would be ready for the early departure in the morning. Gift had driven us on our last safari, but this time we took a special vehicle that had a roof that opened. 

On our way into the park, we saw tons of baboons just chillin' on the road!

A few different animals from the antelope family were in the park as well. Jackson hartebeests, impalas, and kobs can all be found in Uganda. The first picture below is an impala, and the second is a Jackson hartebeest. Kobs are much smaller and the perfect snack for lions and leopards. The hartebeests have terrible memories, so sometimes they will be running from a predator and then stop because they forgot what they were doing. 

We saw water buffalo, giraffes, and elephants as well!

I think our guide said that the darker the giraffe is, the older it is. 

We did not see any leopards, but we did see two lion cubs hunting. They were pretty far away, but if you look closely, you can see them!

After our land safari, we went to the water safari! We went out on the Nile and saw crocodiles, hippos, lots of birds, and Murchison Falls!!

We asked our guide who would win in a fight, crocodiles or hippos? He said that a crocodile could definitely take out a baby hippo, but one chomp from an adult hippo would kill the crocodile. 

Hippos can hold their breath for five to six minutes sometimes! They also like to stay in the water during the day because they can get sunburnt.

The falls were beautiful!!

This picture below was taken seconds after dad's hat flew off his head to the back of the boat and was miraculously caught by our guide driving the boat.

On the boat, I tried Stoney for the first time and absolutely loved it. Anyone who knows me well knows that I love ginger beer, and this was pretty much just ginger beer but better! New favorite drink 🤩. 

After the water safari, we headed to grab some lunch. The place at which we stopped was going to take a really long time to prepare the food, and we didn't have much time, so we didn't stay but still took a picture!

We ended up eating at a restaurant called Red Chili. The servers' shirts had "hot staff" printed on the backs 😂. Before we were served our food, we watched a baboon jump up onto another guests table, grab her tin to-go box, and jump right back down to eat the food on the ground. We were shocked and paid close attention to our surroundings once we got our food. I got a falafel wrapped in chapati, and it was super yummy. Dad ordered popcorn when we were done, and it came on a plate. 

When we got back to RG that afternoon, I asked Janice about receiving packages, and she said that since they don't have a post office or a mailbox that they use, it would be hard to send anything. It is easier to send supplies or packages with someone coming over from the states. My volleyball coach and team from college wanted to send a package with signed volleyballs and t-shirts, so we got in contact with someone who would be traveling to RG soon, and Coach had them sent! We're super excited for them to arrive!