After breakfast, we headed out of Kibale toward Queen Elizabeth National Park. A tree full of black and white colubus monkeys bade us a fond farewell! One even gave us the back of disdain! (I'm sure he was just sitting that way, but...) These guys are so beautiful! I love this long white hair on them!
We took the back roads. Apparently, this is the faster way. Obviously, it's the more interesting way. Bruce, you will be happy to know you are not the only driver put on really bad roads for my benefit! We have been getting LOTS of "African massages" during this trip!
Uganda has a lot of crater lakes, as they previously had active volcanos in the country. You can even do crater lake tours to see many of them and learn their history. Many of those crater lakes were on our path. One of these lakes, the Nyinambuga Crater lake, is pictured on the 20,000 shilling Ugandan note.
There was also lots of farm land along our way. One thing that stood out to me was that the banana fields did not have any bags hanging from them. That was a shock to me, as the only banana fields I've been exposed to before were in Ecuador, and ALL of those fields bag the bananas as they grow on the trees.
As we pulled into Queen Elizabeth National Park, we crossed the equator, moving from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere. Some of the same novelty stunts are set up here as they are along the equator in Ecuador.
When we got to the park, the welcoming committee was out in full force! A large herd of water buffalo
Vervet monkeys
Female waterbuck
Black bellied bustard
And lots of elephants!
After getting settled into our lodgings and eating lunch, we set out to see the Chambura Gorge. It's a nice gorge where some people go to find chimps. It's a harder trek down into the bottom of the gorge and you're less likely to find a habituated family. Glad we did it in Kibale. It's a pretty gorge, though!
On the way back, we stopped and picked up some not-quite-ripe-yet soursop, also known as guanabana and graviola. Delicious fruit, whatever you call it!
And we found elephants hanging out just by the road! Didn't seem bothered by us in the least! I got so excited, I called Bruce on a video chat.
This old guy was by the road eating papyrus almost every time we drove by!
After dinner, we were told that, for our safety, we could not be outside without an escort after dark. This is because we were close to the Kazinga Channel, and the hippos came up to our yard at night to graze. This was exciting to me. However, I can tell you that when they are grazing outside your window, just behind the bush so you can't see them, they do disturb your sleep - even over the BiPAP machine! When my escort came to get me for breakfast, we did hear a grunt, which he confirmed was a hippo behind us! He was on a different path, and luckily, wasn't concerned with us!
After breakfast, we headed into the park. We had decided to pay extra to get the biologist, Dr. James Harrison, who would lead us into the open range in search of the big cats. We saw lots of lions, at one point thinking we were going to witness a mating. One of the lionesses was obviously in heat (according to Dr. Harrison), and the male was hanging close, but she wasn't quite ready. We saw several different prides, including some cubs.
After seeing a ton of lions, we moved on to looking for leopards. We found this lovely lady.
She kept mewing at somebody, so we kept looking around. Finally, we found who she was talking to! Her cub!
We got to see the two of them in their den!
It was a difficult angle. In case you can't see the cub, here's a shot with the baby blown up and focused in. Look at that adorable little tongue!
Mama tolerated us for a while, then she came back outside and let us know she would like us to leave, so we did.
What an amazing morning!! That's the last of the Big 5 - Rhino (in Ziwa), Elephant, Water Buffalo, Lion (Murchison and Queen Elizabeth), and the Leopard (Queen Elizabeth).
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