February 18th,
2015
Hello everyone!
In the jungle, the
mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight…
Our boat ride through the Kazinga Channel was a great
success. We saw so many different animals and birds that I've lost track of how
many of each type we saw. I imagine that the volume of fauna would have been
drastically reduced had the archetypal King of the park been thirsty: the lion.
Luckily for all those water buffalo, the lion population of
Queen Elizabeth National Park (QENP) prefer to doze during the day, doing their
dirty work when the sun is out of the sky. There are rumoured to be 200 or so
of them in the park. The chances of seeing a lion on your game drive are
certainly not guaranteed; our friends Sophie and Rob are yet to see one after
six months in Uganda and more than one attempt at finding them in the park.
The best time to catch them is very shortly after the
sunrise, before they camouflage themselves in the park’s long, dense and
yellowing grass. This meant leaving our base camp shortly before 6:30 in the
morning. Driving in Uganda is interesting enough; adding darkness into the
equation just makes it unnecessarily tense.
We were told that the chances of spotting a pride of lions
are greatly enhanced if you take a Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) guide along
with you. We collected a young, smiling man called Robert, headed across the
Equator back into the southern hemisphere and into the Kazengi section of QENP.
As darkness transformed into light, we witnessed possible
evidence that lions had been around in the past in the form of numerous bones
and skeletons dotted around on the bare, dry floor.
We also saw a plethora of a lion’s main prey in this area:
the Ugandan kob. This type of antelope, which appears on the nation’s currency,
bounces around the savannah on its spindly legs. Robert told us that the males
have their own territory of only 10 to 50 yards and that this can be lost in
the time it takes a kob to go to the water and drink.
We drove around fruitlessly for about forty-five minutes
until we soon found another 4x4 stopped and motioning us over. Quiet as a
mouse, our car Pumbaa rolled up alongside and we peered anxiously out of our
dusty windows.
What we saw was…well, nothing originally. The passengers of
the other car were pointing at a dip in the land about ten metres away.
Suddenly, a movement. A rustle in the grass. Are they ears?
It is very difficult for the pictures to do justice to what
our eyes gazed upon. We had found a lion lying mere metres away from us.
Admittedly, all we could see was the back of the top of its head, but a lion
nonetheless. Very exciting.
After about ten minutes of waiting, hoping for the lion to
show itself more clearly, Robert asked if we wanted to move on. Pumbaa drove
off down a different track, in a different direction to the other jeeps on
Robert’s advice. We drove for another thirty minutes before I was told to slam
on the brakes. Something was in the distance.
What we could see, even from hundreds of metres away, was a
male lion standing proudly, its shaggy mane golden in the ever-rising sunshine.
The king of the jungle.
Remarkably, this was shortly followed by two female lions
strutting past the male, presumably off to hunt.
I would have been content with seeing the head of a lion. To
see three moving around and
interacting was simply a dream. Hannah even saw the male lion roll over and
start flailing his legs playfully in the air. An incredible experience.
This was the zenith of our lion tracking: no more were to be
found. Later on, however, we came across a sad-looking elephant stood on the
edge of our dirt track. We rolled to within a couple of metres of him and
quickly discovered that he didn't have a fully-formed tail or tusks. Robert
explained that the tail may have been a natural problem. As for the tusks…I
dread to think. It is terrible to think that poaching and stealing of ivory
still occurs, even in a protected national park like Queen Elizabeth.
Robert was a fantastic guide. It was he who found the pride
of lions and spread the word to the point that we were joined by five other vehicles
watching in awe. He was very knowledgeable and passionate about the animals,
and definitely improved our game drive experience.
The amazing thing about this was that we were back at base
by 10am. Though admittedly very tired, we still had the rest of the day! We
used this time to drive and walk through some of the mountain towns, where
shouts of, “Hello muzungu how are you!” were once again popular amongst the
schoolchildren. Both Hannah and I love their bright uniforms, particularly the
lilac colours.
Once again, the day had been searingly hot. One way of the
climate rewriting itself in this part of the world is to respond with a rapid
and violent thunderstorm. What we experienced on this night – with power
fluctuating on and off with each fork of lightning – was something I have
seldom witnessed before.
The storm was still raging six hours later, waking me at 2am
with windows rattling in our hut. It was thus with heavy eyelids as well as a
heavy heart that we left base outside QENP, Wild Tracks, the next morning.
Teddy, the owner, was a fantastic, bullish and funny person to return to with
stories from our animalistic adventures. Plus she prayed for us to see lions:
I'm delighted that she did.
Love you all
Matt
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