Last weekend, the six of us left for Fort Portal on Saturday. After being stalked by a twelve year old girl, we tried to stalk King Oyo. Too bad he was in Kampala… and the bodas took us to King Oyo Academy instead. Bushted. It didn’t matter though because we saw an incredible view of Uganda and had quite the America’s Next Top Model photo shoot.
We stayed at the cutest house where the sisters of Fort Portal reside (blue retro walls, coffee cups hanging on the wall, a killer breezeway, and quite the movie collection). We kicked back and got inspired by Michael Jackson’s song “I Will be There” from Free Willy.
We left for Queen Elizabeth Park early the next morning. While we were driving, we stopped at the Equator and we were in two hemispheres at once! Obviously… another photo shoot followed. Shortly after that, we arrived in Queen Elizabeth! We were greeted by a wild elephant and loved every minute of it!!
Because the wild animals weren’t exciting enough, Saint Mary’s set us up at a five star resort called Mweya Safari Lodge. We were in HEAVEN! Within the first five minutes there, they provided us with delicious passion fruit juice and wet cloths for our faces. Once again, heaven. Heaven was interrupted momentarily by a wart hog invasion. Lets just say we got a little cocky and kept saying, “Oh my gosh! Look we’re so close… I can touch it!” Pumba was not impressed and followed with a strange snort/kicking escapade. Byeeee. It is all captured on video though and has easily been watched fifty times since then.
The six of us stayed in a “Royal Cottage”. It was huge and looked like a castle compared to the Backpackers’ Inn (Our Nile lodging). Shortly after, we dropped our bags on the zebra couches, blasted “Waka Waka” while jumping on our beds, and ran out the door to our water safari. We were so excited that we strayed from the path and made our own way – “Guys, I’m slipping… no, I’m really slipping. Why are you laughing and not helping me?” “Are their snakes around here?” “Whose idea was this?”
We boarded our boat “SIMBA”… no joke, our boat was really named Simba. We absolutely loved this because even before seeing the name of our boat we had been singing songs from the Lion King the whole day. While on our boat, we saw hippos, the cutest family of elephants (among many others), water buffalo, pelicans, birds galore (our boat mates LOVED birds), and many more! We loved every minute of it!
We had the best night. The next morning, we woke up from our nap at 5:45 a.m. to leave for our land safari. We were greeted our driver, Vincent (You’re doing it Victor… you’re driving us!) It didn’t take long for us to have our upper halves out of the sun roof and into the Pride Land. We watched the sun rise over the savannah and saw a large number of animals including kobs, impalas, elephants, lions (1.5), hippos, and “homo sapiens”! At one point we were three feet away from an elephant named Mary. We were out of the car… and she was trying to get in. Some members of the group were being selfish when they wouldn’t sacrifice their left arm (you don’t need it!) to attract more lions. Hi Uncle Jim, don’t worry Anne is still intact… for now! We took countless videos and photo shoots and seriously loved every minute of it!
After lunch, we spent the rest of our afternoon swimming in the pool that overlooks Queen Elizabeth Park. Spoiled much? It was honestly one of the best weekends we have ever had… and then our car broke down on the way back. The best way to end our fabulous weekend was to jump back into the classroom Tuesday morning!
XOXO
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