The land of banana trees, tea leaves, and one less hippo 10/14/15
I'm finally feeling better. Godwin got me some pills from the pharmacy for $2; one to fight the amoeba in my stomach, two to battle the stomach issues. Little did I know the pills that fight nauseous are used to sedate people before surgery and fight nausea after anesthesia. I didn't know that until after the fact, so I slept through the entire day yesterday. I don't think I missed anything but a bumpy car ride from Biwindi to the Twin Lakes Safari Lodge in Queen Elizabeth's NP. Apparently I was so out of it, I was asking Andy for sleeping pills as I was passed out almost comatose. We'll keep those pills for the plane ride back.
Today no pills and I'm sticking with the blandest food I can. We woke early for the game drive through the NP. Do not come to Uganda after Tanzania and do a game drive. We are too spoiled. We saw a couple of elephants, water buffalo, here, there, meh. I feel bad but we didn't really take any pics. The highlight of the trip was seeing the volcanic crater lake where they harvest pink salt from, plus the flamingos.
The hotel is very beautiful as it overlooks the NP. Andy commented last night, I don't see any animals down there. Yeah because there aren't. The locals have killed them all because the lions eat their cows, etc, etc. It's unfortunate because this land could be fantastic for the animals, then tourism, then money for locals... At least they have the gorillas.
After an afternoon of battling the wifi (the dude at the hotel says it must be because of the weather- yeah that's it), we headed out for the boat ride. We were pleasantly surprised. I guess the river is where all the animals are. We saw elephants, tons of hippos, alligators (one that caught a fish), Kingfishers, eagles. We were cruising down the river and saw two hippos we were heading for. Oh they will get out of our way, right? Then went underwater and then we heard two big thuds, and a sound like the propeller hit something. No fucking way. We didn't see any carnage or blood so we carried on. I bet there are a lot of hippos with propeller marks on their bodies. We later saw a dead hippo (not the same one) floating by the shore. Male fight to the death I'm told. It was a decent 2 hours spent for some final looks at wildlife.
It's the last night at the hotel so we can to do a full body clean since who knows when we'll have a nice bathroom with warm water again. We were bunked on the sunset which is too bad since we have a fantastic view of the park. Clean clothes from the hotel for $6 and we are ready for the next leg of the journey.