No Tigers, No Bears, but LIONS!!

I had good intentions to write this post days ago, but this week became “Goodbye, Ali!” week, so I had very many social distractions.  Ali (full name is Alastair) is one of the med students here from Manchester and it was his last week before he headed off to Tanzania.  He was my favorite friend I’ve met so far out here, so I was sad to see him go.  I’m sure he’ll have an amazing time in Tanzania though, and luckily, I met an awesome group of people – many of them long-term stayers in Gulu – on my trip last weekend. 

Speaking of trip…..KIDEPO NATIONAL PARK!!!

Last Friday our group of 11 headed north to see the animals.  Saturday morning we went on a game drive and saw…..

Loads and loads and loads of water buffalo.  It reminded me of when I was kid growing up in small-town Wright, WY, just outside of one of the largest plains buffalo ranches in the nation.  Some days they would be out by the highway and the herd seemed endless.  That’s how the water buffalo seemed that morning.  Our guide told us just to keep driving through the middle of the herd and we were literally inches from some of them.  They looked at our jeep rather angrily and some made a few rough noises, but none of them made any move toward our car.  Whew.

It's hard to take them seriously with that thing on their head....

Baboons!  We came across a large boulder that had a dozen or so climbing all over creation.  They jumped from rock to rock, crawled to have a closer look at the car and swung happily through tree limbs.  I literally could have sat and watched them all day, they were so entertaining.  

They blend into the rock pretty well, but if you look closely you can see quite a few of the little guys!

 Wart hogs!  I know it sounds weird, but these little guys are really cute.  Especially the babies.  Oh, the babies are adorable.  They run away if you get very close, tails straight up in the air like a little antenna.  I was kinda sad I got to see a Pumba but no Timon.  Maybe next time…

Why is the baby version everything cute??  Even wart hogs?!  YES!!

A LIONESS AND HER THREE CUBS!  This was truly the highlight.  Particularly since I was not expecting to see one.  I figured since lions are called The King of the Jungle, a lion would look pretty majestic out here in the wild, but I was surprised at just how majestic she looked.  She sat lazily gnawing away at a buffalo hide with her three cubs a little ways behind her.  She was huge, much bigger than I anticipated, and just couldn’t be bothered by our jeep creeping ever closer.  Consequently, we were able to get quite close.  The cubs were still quite far away, but we could see the three of them hiding in the grass and I really just wanted to squeeze one and keep them for my own. 

Look very closely in the center of this pic and you can see the cubs.  Gah!  I want one!

That night we went on another game drive.  We didn’t see nearly as many animals as we had the night before, but we still saw some, and I’m very glad I went because we saw….

Elephants!!  There was an entire herd of them, and we kept driving around trying to cut them off so they would pass in front of us, but to no avail.  We did get closer though and were quite close at one point to a mama and her baby, which, obviously, was extremely precious. 

We went back to see if we could see the lion again, but she was gone and instead we saw a bunch of vultures.  We didn’t get close enough to get good shots, but there were a couple hanging out in the trees nearby.  

More baboons

This sunset

Other highlights:

On the drive up to the park I wound up in Tiziana’s car.  She’s a 31 year-old Italian woman working for the World Food Project and has been here since June.  All she wanted to talk about was music, which was sincerely a lovely change of events.  Strangely enough, I don’t find many opera-goers here in Gulu, so someone with a sincere passion for classical music in general and choral works specifically, is a welcome rarity.  Leave it to an Italian.

Tiziana’s car is minus AC, so it was a long and DUSTY trip.  When I finally got to wash my hair it was horrifyingly dirty.  The picture doesn’t do it justice at all.  I was yelling at Tiziana to grab my camera so she could capture it, but by the time she found it and started snapping photos, most of the amazing redness had already washed down the drain. 

The first night we were there the only other American with us – Mollie – decided it was time for a round of Murder (some of you may know it as Mafia.)  It was most amusing watching a bunch of 20-something non-Americans learn to play this game I’ve been playing for years.  I always got killed off early *except* when I was actually the murderer.  And then I won every time.  People started wondering if there was something they were missing about this girl who came off as so innocent….Mwahaha.

Later that night….  My doxycycline (anti-malaria) pill bottle tells me to take it on an empty stomach with plenty of water.  Well, I didn’t eat much for dinner, and only drank water afterwards, so when I went to bed that I night and forgot to bring water with me I thought, “Oh, I’ll just swallow the pill, it’s fine, there is plenty of water in my stomach.”  About an hour later I woke up in some of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced.  Massive heartburn.  Massive.  Like I wanted to literally rip my chest out.  Pretty sure my attempt to swallow got stuck half-way down and it sat dissolving in my esophagus for an hour.  Yikes.  So…that’s not a highlight, but because of that, I was sitting up in bed in extreme pain when Tiziana walked in.  She immediately knew something was wrong and went to go get some of the medical staff to see what they could do.  Our friend George is a doctor here in Gulu and three people from Manchester are here – two med students and a nurse.  So, George and Ali came to see what they could do.  Since no one had any antacids, I threw up the milk (it was warm and was in a bag, can you blame me?!) and eating was horrifically painful, there wasn’t much anyone could do.  However, Tiziana had a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird on her bed and I said something in my dazed state about loving the book.  Tiziana said, “You can have it!” and Ali said, “Would you like me to read from it?!”  I started laughing, “A Brit reading a southern American classic.  This I gotta hear.  Yes, please!”  He responded, “I’ll read it in a southern accent.”  Oh, I have never hurt so bad and laughed so hard.  What I wouldn’t give for a recording so you all could hear that.  He also turned to Irish, Cockney and Scottish.  Sorry Harper Lee, it may have been an abomination to your novel, but that was an amazing moment of my life.

The next morning after our game drive we had an enormous breakfast.  Mollie, (the other American girl) had actually organized the whole trip and assigned everyone food to bring.    Remember the chapatti I blogged about last week?  That morning I had it with Nutella and banana slices.  I’m sure the crepes we make back home with the same toppings are just as good, but somehow, when it’s a novelty in remote east Africa, it just tastes like I would imagine food in paradise.  Though it hurt like Hades going down since the heartburn wasn’t gone.  It was worth every painful bite.

When you aren’t out on the game drives, there isn’t much else to do in the parks.  So, after another evening of Murder dissolved into conversation, people slowly began drifting off to bed.  We needed a new game.  So I busted out Spoons.  I don’t know why it was so much fun listening to Sarah in her English accent yelling, “Four of a kind! Four of a kind! Four of a kind!” instead of grabbing a spoon, and listening to David go on endlessly about his spoon strategy (fyi – the only strategy in Spoons is “be quick about it!”) but it sure was.  It didn’t hurt that I won every time as well. (Well, kinda.  I couldn’t remember what you did when it got down to two players, so top two won.)  It also didn’t hurt that they all seemed to enjoy the game as much, if not more, than I did. 

Just before we went in for the kill.  I can't remember exactly, but I would guess Sarah (to my right) got four of kind and David (to my left) missed the spoon.  Thanks to Ali for taking the shot (who had already lost. Ha.)

There is an elephant named Bulbul who hangs out in the camp.  Apparently, his father did the same.  Consequently, he is not shy of the campers whatsoever.  The morning before we left he came sauntering right through the middle of where we were staying.  He was inches from my friends George’s car.  He was massive and looked at me through his left eye as I chased after him to get the photos.  Maybe not my smartest move ever, but totally worth it.

Aren't you glad that's not your car?!

Two little monkey’s jumping on my bed.  OK, not really on my bed, but there are these two monkeys that hang out in the camp, like Bulbul does, and if you gave them the chance, they would jump on your bed.  Guaranteed.  They are quite playful and apparently quite vicious.  Mostly I just loved watching them hop around and get into things just the way you would imagine two monkeys doing.  Our last morning there we had some avocados and bananas hanging out in the dining hall that we were deciding what to do with.  No decision necessary, before anybody realized, the monkeys had stolen them all.  Sneaky little buggers!

Monkey-see, Monkey-do

Double Trouble.  Truly.

When we got back, we all showered (I was even dustier from the drive home if that’s possible and Tiziana let me come over and shower in her real, live, water-pouring shower – bless that child) and met back at the Ethiopian restaurant in town.  Easily my favorite place to eat in Gulu, the food is great and the company was great.  The weekend, was great.  

Yummy food, and we're all shiny-happy clean!

All the happy travelers.  Two Americans, three Italians, one Ugandan, four Brits, and one Irishman.