It’s true that Mom & Dad arrived home in Williams Lake over a week ago now, but besides our lengthy stop at the border, we have yet to share about trips with them to Uganda and Lake Kivu in Rwanda.

Once we left the border, it was a mere four more hours to Kingfisher Lodge which overlooked an endless stretch of savanna from high atop a hill. It was a beautiful setting to spend a few days, and we enjoyed the view, the relaxing, and the pool as much as we enjoyed the safari in Queen Elizabeth Park.

After our recent safari in Akagera before Christmas, we weren’t sure how many animals we would see that we hadn’t seen before. Upon the advice of friends, we decided to hire a local guide named Matthew who literally moonlighted as a night guard at the lodge. Show off the animals by day, protect them from the same animals at night! We’re not sure exactly when Matthew slept, but fortunately he was not the one driving. Nonetheless, he was an excellent guide.

Our safari started off with a bang on a river cruise on the Kazinga Channel. Aboard a 50-seat boat with an upper observation deck, we saw some amazing sites. Besides crocodiles to elephant herds to dozens of hippos, we passed a small fishing village that made you feel you had travelled back in time. In 1989, this village had been the site of thirteen deaths, all caused by the same killer lion. Now stuffed, this vicious beast was now on display in the local museum. Didn’t look that scary to me!

As the photo below was being snapped, to the chagrin of his grandchildren, Grandpa said quite loudly, “Well, you can sure tell that one is a male!”

After the river cruise, we headed out on safari with the primary purpose of spotting a lion. Matthew had heard from his fellow guides that lions had been seen in a certain portion of the park, so we headed there. As we rounded a corner, we saw a lion sitting majestically on top of a rock, but we never made it to that rock. Little did Matthew know that we had another local lion expert sitting in the back of our Land Cruiser. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you … Tracey Thiessen. Tracey spotted four lions sitting in the grass directly beside the truck. I slammed on the brakes, and there we stayed until dark watching the lions ten feet away from us.

Another highlight of the safari occurred the next day as we were about to leave the park at the end of our 24-hour pass. We had seen many elephants already over the course of the last two days, but we hadn’t seen anything yet. As we came down a hill, I counted one elephant, then two, coming up from the shores of the channel. We stopped to get one last look. Within seconds, there were three, four, then five. Then ten. Then twenty. In all, we counted a line of thirty-two elephants. Fathers, mothers, and babies in a straight line heading back to the hills and the shade to beat the afternoon heat and find food. We may never witness something like that ever again. We couldn’t believe they kept coming!

A visit to the equator topped off the day’s events. While there was no guy proving that water swirls in opposite directions on both sides of the imaginary line, it was still pretty cool to cross from the southern hemisphere to the northern with just one big step. It was Mom & Dad’s first trip to the equator too. After years of international travel, I didn’t think there was anything we could show them that they hadn’t experience before.

Up next, Part 3, the trip to Gisenyi and Lake Kivu.

Tags: equator, Queen Elizabeth Park, safari, Uganda