Hitting the road in Uganda

There’s no way I can write about everything that happened during the five weeks we had off school between the 13 and 9 week terms. Instead, here's some pictures, I know it's a bit of a cop out, but hope you enjoy the next 2 photo blogs anyway.

Here's my first trip...

30^th April-6^th May. Road trip from Masaka to Kampala, a very long way around, through Queen Elizabeth National Park, the crater lakes and Fort Portal.

This is Dylan, our car that we picked up in Masaka and became very attached to over our week with him, he served us well. Bumping over dirt tracks, through biiiig puddles and over fields on our adventures across Queen Elizabeth and beyond. 

Tea pickers in Agara district, using pretty advanced technology to pick the  leaves.

This was our first view over the plains of Queen Elizabeth, this photo doesn't capture it, but it was like something out of the Africa series, it really was stunning and so unusual.

This was a place at the side of the road selling really good honey, in glass waragi (Uganadan gin) bottles. We got overly excited about the fact we could stop whenever we wanted to, up until this week we'd only ever used public transport in Uganda, which doesn't allow for much stopping.

Posing next to Dylan

This was as close to that lake as we could get to, which was infuriating because  we saw several herds of different animals, but we couldn't quite see what they were

Holly and Svandis watching the elephants, hoping there were no lions nearby...

The best animal viewing is from the roof of Dylan, our loyal companion. When we spotted the elephants, me and Jenny were straight on the roof

We brought our little charcoal stove with us, which gave us some yummy dinners on our trip.

This is a small section of a much bigger salt farm which covered the majority of this small lake, we couldn't quite work out how salt is actually farmed here, but it was a pretty spectacular sight, with white, bleached sticks standing upright, marking the edges of hundreds of glass water pools.

Driving in the park was so much fun! Especially as it was rainy season,  which meant LOTS of mud.

The iguana that walked across the road in front of us

Another view over Queen Elizabeth plains, from the Crater drive, which took us high up into the crater hills in the park.

This is one of the crater lakes

This is a tree that was blocking our track, instead of moving the tree, a new route had been made around it! After a failed first atempt to get Dylan up the very steep muddy verge I managed to conquer the obstacle! 

We were just driving out of the little car park to a hotel in the park where we treated ourselves to a really good lunch one day, when these little fellas appreared out of the hedge omn one side of the road, and very confidently trotted across infront of us, to disappear into the hedge on the other side of the road.

This was taken at about 7am. The highlight of the whole trip for me was when we woke up in the dark in order to be out on the Kasenyi plains for the sunrise. Only 15 minutes or so into Kasenyi we drove past a big herd of elephants. They stopped next to us and then turned around The sight of twenty or so elephants crossing in absolute silence infront of us in the pre-dawn light of Uganda is etched into my memory. We watched until they were completely out of sight, then sat in silence, stunned, for some time.

The biggest chapattis I've seen in my life! This little village that we stumbled up on in the middle of the park  gave us a welcome takeaway breakfast, that ended up being lunch as well.

Later on the same drive, we turned a corner, to see a pair of hippos wander onto the road. I was driving, and was torn between wanting to get as close as possible, and being rather nervous of these powerful animals, as they weaved across the road and back again, disappearing behind bushes, then reappearing only metres from the car.

Queen Elizabeth is a Kob breeding ground, we saw countless numbers of them roaming around.

On our drive up to the crater lakes from Queen Elizabeth (different from the crater lakes in Queen Elizabeth)  there was an amazing clothes market. We all picked up some great bargains. Markets in Uganda are incredible. hundreds of thousands of clothes get shipped over from Europe and sold here for next to nothing. It's great!

This is our little hut which we thought was perfect. Until we were inundated with  screaming bats and rats in the night, all night.

The crater lake next to our campsite.

This was awaterfall we walked to, we were nervous about going in to start with...

but we all ended up getting plummeted by the cascading water in the end. 

This is Fort Portal, the cleanest, most orderly town in the whole of Uganda., and the last stop on  our road trip, before the long road back to Kampala.