Trip to Fort Portal Continued…

Trip to Fort Portal Continued…

So, when I left off on here it was Tuesday and I was on my way to Queen Elizabeth with jonelle. We borrowed Fr. Fred’s truck, hired a driver, filled it with gas and headed down to QE. I do really wish that I knew how to drive stick, since there are no automatics here. Perhaps I can pay someone to teach me. Anyways, we left at 5:30 in the moring and because of bad road conditions it took about 2 hours to get there. At first driving around the park we wondered where all the animals were. We saw plenty of antelopes and warthogs, but there wasn’t an elephant in sight. It is a funny thing though, when I saw my first warthog I was amazed. By the end of the trip they were a little more banal. I am glad that I am seeing more of Uganda than just the game parks, but I wouldn’t have wanted to leave having missed it either. It seemed that the animals were scarce for the morning. We saw our first elephant just at a distance in the bush. Then we saw a hippo in one of the ponds. Most often you will only see hippos in the water since they have sensitive skin, but just as we watched it, the hippo rose out of the water and walked into the bush. Oh my, those things look huge!
Then while driving through the back roads, we came across a herd of about 15 elephants with their younglings having mud baths right next to the road.
I was in awe. They were about 20 meters away from us, tearing leaves from bushes, and caring for their young. It was a sight to see!

Later in the afternoon, we took a boat ride on lake Edward looking at the hippos and the buffalo.

On Wednesday Jonelle and I took a taxi out to the nature reserve at Lake Nkurbya. We booked a guide and went hiking through all the different crater lakes. While doing this we also hiked through many of the smaller villages. I had seen for the first time houses that were roofed with banana leaves. I have a hard time understanding how there could ever be a hunger problem here in Uganda. The land here is very fertile. It turns out though, that two issues is malnutrition and the fact that many of the children are only dewormed every three years. They are thus eating for free.
I ate sugar cane directly off the cane in one of the local villages. You really have to have a strong jaw to rip the outer coats from the cane. Seems all that teeth grinding has finally been put to good use.

I also tried some of the local alchohol, which is a drink called ouaragi, which is in effect banana gin. It is good stuff, but has a strong bite to it.

In the end, we took a dip in the lake there. I was told that it was snails free, so I hopefully won’t get worms. Feeling great though, so i think i am in the clear.