Day 45 Queen Elizabeth National Park

Thursday January 27^th. Up really early again, and felt poorly. I considered not doing the activities but decided to go anyway, because when the hell will I get another chance. So we started by going for a short game drive through Queen Elizabeth National Park. We saw a couple of waterbucks, a couple of griffin vultures, an elephant and a crested eagle. Then we arrived at Kyambura Gorge for a hike through a beautiful rainforest jungle area in a river gorge to track chimpanzees.

We had a female guide, who told us what to expect, what to look for and carried an AK-47 in case we ran into any other dangerous animals.

We had a great hike through old growth forest. We saw lots of evidence of elephants with piles of old and fresh dung around. We saw evidence of chimps too, with freshly eaten fruit, fresh tracks and scat. We even heard them, but alas we never saw them. We did however she black and white colobus monkeys and red tailed monkeys, but they were too high in the trees for photos. We could also hear hippos bellowing in the area. Shortly afterwards we came across them in a pool in the river. Got to see them close up.

After that we had lunch, and then continued our game drive through QE NP. We saw baboons, elephants, waterbuck, and cape buffalo. Then we arrived at the channel that connects Lakes George and Edward. Right at the entrance we saw two warthogs that certainly weren't afraid of us. They grazed, from their knees, all around us. We boarded a river boat for a two hour cruise. It was much better than expected and we saw lots of animals, from cape buffalo and elephants in the water, to impala, waterbuck, big nile crocodiles, and lots of birds from hammercop, pelicans, storks, herons and kingfishers.

John and I have made two new friends, John from New York and Don from Waterloo Ontario.

After the boat ride we drove back to camp for dinner, stopping along the way for a photo shoot at an equator sign. Another early night.