Lake Mburo

A few random photos to start...

Last week in Kampala Arleen and I showed up in the exact same clothes to go out for dinner!

Karl & Arleen's dogs ate my cellphone!

I had 2 very clear childhood flashbacks this weekend.

1. THE LION KING: When you go on an African safari, if you've ever seen this movie, I promise you will really really want to start singing "When I was a Young Warthog!" as soon as you see a cute little warthog trotting through the bush. Oh warthogs, so precious and cuddly. Or so I thought. After a lovely boat ride through Lake Mburo, and several sightings of hippos, crocodiles, and millions of birds, I was feeling so peaceful and tranquil as we stepped off the boat. In my own content dreamland, I stood just off the shore waiting to go back to the car, when suddenly I hear "MEGAN!" I never knew my reflexes were so fast. I looked down to see a warthog charging at me from behind, grunting like a pig (I suppose he is one after all), his tusks aimed straight at me. Naturally, I screamed as loud as I could and ran like never before until I so stealthily threw him off my trail and he went back to chewing on the grass. Two park rangers stood close by and I'm pretty sure they were laughing at me. Darn warthogs! Pumba's not so cute after all.

2. THE JUNGLE RIVER CRUISE ride in Disneyland: Back to the boat ride. If you've ever been on the Jungle River Cruise, you'll know that there is a cheesy ride operator who warns you about wild animals, and when you get to the hippos he says, "Watch out, they're only dangerous when they're wiggling their ears!" And then they wiggle their ears. Well, on this particular boat ride, we were getting awfully close to the hippos (in my opinion). I'm pretty sure they were under the boat. If you don't know how dangerous hippos are, let me tell you: very dangerous. As we approached one school of hippos, I noticed that they were all wiggling their ears as their heads came up and down in the water. Suddenly the Disneyland boat ride operator's voice was not so cheesy. Elaine and I looked at each other with fear in our eyes, and then burst out laughing. Oh Disneyland...you can't fool us...

All in all our safari was great. We slept in canvas safari tents raised up on platforms, with beds and mosquito nets inside. It felt truly safari-esque.

The next morning we decided to take a walking safari with a guide. We met him at 6:30 am and he led us on a big loop through the park. Some mentionable sightings include zebra, cob, eland, buffalo, waterbuck, impala, monkeys, and baboons. Surprisingly, the most terrified we became on our entire walk was when our guide shouted out, "red ant safari!" and we looked down to see thousands of red ants coming out of their hill. No one was bitten, but we found it pretty funny that our tough looking guide, gun in hand, was terrified of the tiniest animal in the entire park.

Paul with buffalo horns, me with impala antlers.

On a completely different note, the night we got back from our safari I came down with malaria. It started out with chills and aches, and turned into a fever and nausea. So I had to spend two nights in the hospital on an IV. It was not fun! Thankfully I am now recovering and just taking it easy at home. Another thing to be thankful for is my amazing husband, who stayed at the hospital with me for two nights and slept on the edge of the bed, brought me Sprite, made my lunch, etc. Monday is our one year anniversary and we're off to Zanzibar, so please pray that the malaria will be gone by then! :) I now officially hate warthogs and mosquitos.