Hakuna Matata!

Okay, I feel like a broken record right now, but I would just like to say again that I have the BEST life ever. I just had the most incredible weekend of my life. Seriously can’t even put into words how amazing it was. What was so amazing about it? It was AFRICAN SAFARI WEEKEND!!

The team!

I have wanted to go on an African safari probably my whole life, and it definitely lived up to my expectations. On Friday we took a charter bus the four hours down to Kampala, and spent the night at the hostel of the safari company “Red Chilli.” We got up super early the next morning, grabbed some breakfast, and jumped in our awesome safari cars. We had about a three hour drive from Kampala to the Murcheson Falls State Park (I can’t remember if it’s actually called a state park, but the same idea). Once we got into the park, we opened our windows, watched for animals, and sang “Hakuna Matata” at the top of our lungs. So great. The first day we didn’t see a lot of wildlife, but we did come across some baboons, warthogs, buffalo, and some other species of monkey. After driving for a while, we arrived at Murcheson Falls, which was sooo beautiful! (I will just let the pictures do the talking) We ate our picnic lunch and went for a little hike around the falls to see them from a better angle. They were breathtaking.

Murcheson Falls

After the falls, we jumped back in the safari cars and drove a little further to the Red Chilli campsite. The campsite was pretty nice with flushing toilets, real showers (though not too warm), a bar/restaurant, and big tents with real beds in them.  Oh also, the campsite had warthogs and baboons, just running around. No big. We hung around playing games for a while before heading to bed, where Hannah and I had quite the adventure getting a lizard out of our tent before we could go to sleep. There may have been some screaming and jumping on beds involved. It may have been me doing those things. Lizards don’t usually bother me too much, but when one is running around where I am about to go to sleep….yeah, I wanted him out of there.

This wasn't the lizard in our room, but it's a cool picture I got

The next morning, we got up super early to start the best day of my life. Seriously the best. We got in our safari car with Hassan, our awesome driver. He made sure we were the first car everywhere we went so we got to see all of the best stuff. We went in our safari car on a ferry that took us across the Nile to where the animal reserve started. Once we were across the river, Hassan opened the roof of the car so we could all stand and look out. I was in the back seat and ended up sitting up on the roof of the car in the back. Perfect seat. I won’t go through every detail of our four-hour game drive, but it was so great. We got really lucky and saw everything that was an option to see in the area that we were in. This included: buffalo, antelope, hartebeest, lots of little deer things, a giant lizard, lots of cranes and other birds, opaki, warthogs,hippos, giraffes, elephants, aaaaaannnnd……. a LION!!! Aaaaaannnd……a LEOPARD!! It was amazing. After our game drive, we went for a boat ride up to the falls that we were at the day before. While we were on that beautiful little cruise, we saw some elephants way up close, TONS of hippos, more cool birds, and two HUGE crocodiles. Also amazing.

There she is! Bummed it got a little cut off...

My awesome sister let me take her nice camera on the safari. Which is why I got such rockin pictures. And was named the safari team photographer. 

Besides all of the animals, the scenery was also incredible. Definitely prettier than I expected safari scenery to be. It was so green and full of the coolest trees, and in the morning with the sunrise behind the clouds, the sky looked incredible! The whole day was honestly breathtaking. I had to keep reminding myself that this was real life and I wasn’t just watching a super awesome nature video, or going on the Disneyland safari cruise. It’s one thing to see all of those animals and the beautiful scenery in pictures and movies, but it is an entirely different thing to see it all in real life right there at my fingertips. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. There was a long stretch of our drive that I just sat in silence on the roof with a silly grin on my face, looking out over everything and just trying to take it all in. The whole day was literally a dream come true and I couldn’t get enough of it.

Wish the pictures did it justice

The last day, we had another mini game drive in the morning, hiked to another beautiful waterfall, and then Hassan drove us in our safari car all the way back to our house in Mbale. And I definitely had vacation let-down when I got back. I just wanted to stay in that little tent going out on game drives every day for the next month. But, there is work to be done. So I will just have to come back again. It was amazing.

P.S. There was one thing that made me excited to leave the safari campsite; I was so sick of mzungus!! Red Chilli is a pretty hot tourist attraction so all weekend we were surround by other Americans, and Europeans, and Australians. And I just didn’t want them! I missed being surrounded by Africans and having cute babies wave and say hi to me. As we were driving home, I got so excited when we were passing through villages and I could see the real Africa, rather than the touristy Africa I had been in.  I really just feel like I am Ugandan and I live here. I kind of hated myself this weekend for being such a tourist. It won’t happen again. Sometimes I forget that I’m not black and I haven’t lived here all my life. This is just home. And if this weekend was any indication, I am going to have a very hard time to going back to America where I am surrounded by mzungus constantly and there is not a chapatti man in sight. Can’t think about that yet.

Love this place!