HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: We didn’t travel as far in the bus today
BUMMER OF THE DAY: The weather was a little off for the lake cruise
BUYS OF THE DAY: A bottle of local vodka that Em and went halves in at 6AUD each
WORD OF THE DAY:
ANIMALS SEEN TODAY: Ibis, encoli cows, egrets, pelicans in numbers, yellow beak cranes, cormorants in huge numbers, hippos – a lot of them, African fish eagle, savannah elephants and water buffalo.
CAMP SITE RANKING: Pretty good, flushing toilets, cold showers and an undercover to eat under, oh and a bar. 3 out of 5 stars
Well day 8 of the trip and 7 days of camping in the tent and I have to say I am quite enjoying the whole camping gig. Our tents really don’t take too much time to put up, and we have got the rolling and putting away of the tents just about down pat, so this is probably the biggest hassle with the whole process which takes up 20 minutes of our day. I’d only texted my old boss a few days before leaving London, telling her if she ever needs a good laugh, to think of me in a tent for 60 days, but I am happy to report I am loving it. For those of you who know me, to imagine me camping one night let alone 60 nights is outrageous banter!!!
I’m finding I am waking up before my alarm even goes off which has been set for 6am the last 3 mornings. It’s not so bad, as you get first crack at the toilets and getting onto the truck to avoid the morning congestion when everyone is trying to get all their gear back on the truck. We left camp this morning at 8am with only 200km to drive today it should only take us around 4 hours.
I have a competition running and I have got the whole bus to guess how many pictures I will end up with at the end of the trip. The guesses are listed below, so there will be no challenges next year saying that their guess was written up wrong. The blog does not lie.
15,555 Janet
28,488 Paps
29,555 Jo
30,489 Em
33,333 Bree
32,873 Sean
34,245 Emma S
35,731 Lisa
37,377 Laura
38,641 Emma T
43,246 Louise
46,100 ME
49,251 Katie
63,483 Mike
92,000 Julia
Our first stop was at a town called Fort Porto. Liz had to get some food shopping done, so we got 45 minutes to get some things done. There was an internet café but apparently it was slow so I didn’t bother. I really need Wi-Fi for my blog anyway. I did some banking instead. I tell you I have come nowhere near spending my daily budget of 100AUD a day. The last 2 times I have used an ATM, I have pulled out 80,000 shillings which converted is only 32AUD and this has lasted me 3 days each time. Now that is outrageous. So I am re-couping money, which is awesome and hopefully will give me extra cash in the kitty to do Europe on the way home next year. Not a bad incentive hey. We went to the supermarket and stocked up on some more water. Em and I decided to go halves in a bottle of vodka that was 12,000 shillings (8AUD) so we can have a tipple when the mood suits. For 8AUD it is probably rocket fuel, but it is Ugandan so we are trying something locally distilled! Sean and Emma have been chasing a blanket and pillow respectively and they both found these at the supermarket as well. They were both the same cost as the vodka to give you an idea on the costs. Sean’s blanket has been dubbed the ‘lurve’ blanket as it is pink with hearts and love written all over it.
We travelled for a few more hours and then stopped at a local market that was set up roadside. I think this works a little like Morocco where the markets are on once a week on a certain day, so it was quite busy when we got there. It is a crying shame that the locals don’t like having their photos taken as it was a photographers paradise with all the colours of the fruit and veggies and the ladies dresses. Em was saying the adults are paranoid that if we take their pictures they think when we go home and show all our friends that we then make fun of them. Based on that I wouldn’t want my photo taken either, so they are a tough crowd. If you ask them then it’s okay, but 90% of the time it is a no anyway. We were able to bust a few out if you include some-one from our group, so I did get a handful of pictures. The main thing at the markets was HUGE bunches of green banana’s, there would have been over 300 per bunch and they were all loaded on to bicycles for the transportation. Some of the bikes had 5-8 bunches on a bike!!! It looked amazing!
We finally got to stop at an equator sign as we pass over it for the third time. There was one on both sides of the road, so half of the group went to one side and the others stayed on our side. We decided to get a group photo on the other side of the road and as we were all crossing, 2 minivans of school children pulled up. So I asked one of the teachers if he could take our photo for us and he misunderstood and walked over to be ‘in’ the photo, so why not get all of them in, so I invited them all to get in the photo. There would have been around 60 of them all in their uniforms, so it was an awesome photo with our group and the students on the equator line, how many people can have that claim to fame? It was an opportunity I couldn’t let pass so I also got them to do a Bernstar jump as well, it sort of worked, but as there were some many people there wasn’t much room, but you can see the front people jumping so that was pretty cool for me. I also got my own jump, so I am back on the jump board again – welcome back.
We made it to camp at 1pm. The weather is a little drizzly today, so the camp site is a little muddy. But this is also part of the camping experience, so suck it up princess. We are lucky it has an undercover area where Liz prepares the food and enough room for us to all sit to get out of the weather. Tents up, beds made, we had around 45 minutes to chillax till we got back on the truck and headed into Queen Elizabeth National Park. I had volunteered a few nights ago to be Jools financial controller, when it came to spending the kitty money, so my first duties came when we had to enter the park. I recounted the money and passed it to the ranger and waited till we got our receipt. My personal banker Shelly would be proud and my post banker days finally coming in handy again.
We had a nature cruise booked for 5pm, so we got around 1.5 hours to drive around the park. We had elephants in our sights today, along with leopards (yeah good-luck),hippos and lions. We are yet to see a male lion with the mane for our photos. Well we didn’t have to wait long to see elephants. We saw a herd of 8 and they had 3 babies with them. They were probably 800m away, but we were able to get some good photos and not be in a distance that was going to upset them. We drove a little further and we got to another herd and they were a lot closer, around 10m away. There were 3 of them, a female, a teenager and a baby. We got to watch them for a few minutes till one of them started to get ancy and gave the charge stance, the flapping of the ears and an elephant call. It made for a cool photo even though we could have been in immediate danger, as there was no way Chris could have started the truck and moved had she decided to charge the truck. Oh living life on the edge….
Down to the lake for our cruise, which was like a jumping crocodile boat, seats downstairs close to the water and there was a viewing area on top to accommodate 14 people. We departed at 5pm and after a hiccup of some passengers having not paid and doubling back to offload them, we got on our way at 5.25pm. It is a shame the day was crappy. The sky was grey, which in turn our photos look a little lifeless, but we did get to see like a hundred hippos in the water. We saw a few yawning (which is a sign of aggression) but I wasn’t quick enough to capture it on my camera. Some of them would literally pop up right next to the boat. This place would be a bird watchers paradise, so needless to say we saw a hell of a lot of birds and hippos for the 1.5 hours we were on the water. The guide for the cruise asked for my email address should he have any problems with the stowaways we had started out with, which I was happy to provide.
Back to camp with one more elephant sighting right next to the road. As we didn’t get back to camp till 7pm, dinner was already up and ready to go, so we washed the hands 3 times and tucked into zucchini soup for starters and then we had crumbed fish, potatoes and veggies for dinner with custard for dessert. I don’t know why, but it seemed like there were a billion dishes to wash tonight and guess who was on dish duty! Yeah team A. But I do have to say the truck people had a pretty rough day, as the weather was wet, we were all tramp sing in mud from our shoes, so they also had a massive job getting the floors all clean – poor bastards.
We all headed up to the bar after dinner, where I was able to recharge my laptop and have a beer before heading back to my tent. I wasn’t going to take any chances with snakes and hippos, so I had my headlamp on as well as my mega night torch to get me back safely. My feet were dirty as, so I decided to have cold shower to rinse off and then I was able to finish yesterday’s blog before reading for a little while and then switching off the headlamp at 11pm.
Let’s hope that no snakes come to visit and the hippos keep their distance from the camp, even though it would make a great blog entry I think there has to be a line drawn somewhere – right?
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