Safari! Queen Elizabeth National Park Uganda

I was up at 5 am Saturday morning to meet Ronald for my long awaited and much anticipated safari. Remember Ronald from the previous post? He is a great guy and an excellent driver. He's incredibly nice, very funny, he puts his clients first and best of all...he will come and pick you up at 6 am or 9 pm or any time in between with no problems.

Despite the high esteem I hold Ronald in, I still chose the budget safari. He didn't take it too badly when I told him the news. He was happy to drive me to the Red Chilli drop off point on the other side of Kampala. So off we went in the predawn hours to join the tour.

I'm not exactly sure what I expected to encounter when I got to the hostel, but after living a Ugandan life for the last two months, I was definitely not prepared to find myself in a room full of Europeans and Americans sitting around drinking French press coffee and eating porridge...killing time watching the BBC while waiting for the tours to leave. For a split second I thought - am I dreaming that I'm in a European hostel thinking about an African safari? No that can't be right. I'm still in Uganda.

The safari left Red Chilli at 7:45 am for Queen Elizabeth National Park in western Uganda. There were nine of us in total - Nasar our driver, four of us from the U.S., two from the Czech Republic and two from Holland. It was a long drive out there (about 10 hours) but we stopped along the way for lunch and other short breaks. Uganda has rolling green hills that turn mountainous as you go west. Traffic thins out after leaving Kampala and the main road is actually quite good. It was a beautiful and peaceful drive.

Over the next four days we went on game drives, took walks through the communities and forests within the national park, and just relaxed and enjoyed ourselves. For me, it was a chance to see something of Uganda beyond Kampala. Of course, me being me I tested Internet connectivity the whole way there and back, but other than this one concession to the siren song of technology I switched off, relaxed and appreciated the beauty of everything around me.

The whole time I've been here I've been weighing my pre-trip expectations against the reality of what I've seen around me. There are some things I've seen that have lived up to my expectations and some that have not. The safari has exceeded my expectations. I was completely blown away by what I saw, and so impressed with how this national park is managed and with the professionalism of Ugandan tourism.

So, with that I'll stop talking and send you to the photos on Flickr. Fair warning...I'm not a very good photographer and my iPhone 4 camera has lighting issues these days. :-)