Heading south

When we arrived at Mweya Lodge we thought the rule about not walking at night for fear of hippos was silly, as the lodge was easily 100 feet above the Kazinga Channel at the top of quite a steep cliff. But our first evening, right after dinner, our trip leader took a photo of a hippo right by the walkway to the lodge dining room!

This morning (Thursday) we started again at 6:15 with a game drive. We went to check on the  elephant carcass to see if any predators had visited overnight. To our surprise, they had not, and the number of vultures had decreased significantly. As we headed further east on the channel road, we came across a large male hippo crossing the road and heading back to the channel at his leisure. Hippos do not waddle on land but walk quite smoothly. Then while we were watching him, a hyena wandered by, heading back towards the elephant. A herd of waterbuck stood quietly watching both animals.  The hyena decided that fresh waterbuck was more attractive than old elephant and turned around to give chase.  Waterbuck have poor depth perception, and the herd was a bit slow to recognize their peril. We do not know the outcome of the chase as the animals disappeared into the brush. We did not see many mammals during the rest of the drive (other than warthogs and kob). We did see a variety of birds including some new sightings. 

After breakfast, we headed south to the Ishasha section of Queen Elizabeth Park, another 2 hours on rough roads.  At one point there were so many little white butterflies that it felt like driving through a snowstorm. Fitbit statistics are unreliable this week as we keep getting over 10,000 steps just from bouncing in the Jeep!   Ishasha is famous for lions who climb trees.  Fig trees are their favorites because of the numerous horizontal-ish branches, and our guides knew where to find a large male lion napping in the afternoon breeze.  He didn’t mind our taking endless photos while he slept.  

Our lodging tonight is a tent camp by a river, with the sounds of monkeys (during the day) and lions (at night).  This is truly glamping as both the food and the WiFi are the best since we left Entebbe.