Disneyland? Nope its the real thing

Giraffes fighting with their necks!

So we just got back from our 3 day Safari!! It was so so AWESOME!! We saw giraffes like 5 feet from our car and elephants and a Lion, we saw a million hippos and just had a blast seeing all the crazy animals.  It was super funny some of the language barriers of our trip.  Our guide, Thomas said we were going on a Launch cruise but if you say launch with an African accent it sounds like a Lunch cruise. It is one thing to see these animals in a zoo but to see them in their natural habitat it is CRAZY! We were driving along the road and there was buffalo skin in the tree.  The guide told us that a leopard attacked the buffalo and then started being chased by a lion so took the buffalo up into the tree. Isn’t that CRAZY??? We met some really nice people; one guy was from the same tribe as Kony.  He was telling Nate how he lived in the woods escaping the LRA, he was such a nice guy.  It’s so insane, you hear all these stories but when you meet these people and hear about their lives it is really crazy what people go through.  Our second night we stayed in a grass hut! I was so excited, especially because Nate and I got our own hut. We really felt like we were in Africa in our hut.  It’s funny when staying in a hut feels like a luxury compared to our house here in Lugazi.

This wart hog tried to attack some of the girls in our group, pretty funny.  One girl says that what you get when you base your perception of an animal off of Lion King

After an amazing day of safari(ing) we went and saw there tribal dancers.  They did a special presentation just for us.  I don’t think I have ever seen Nate shake it like he did last night.  It was hillarous he had a grass skirt on and  he made Shakira look like she didn’t know what she was doing. It was a blast and we all danced with the village kids.  The dancing started with our group and about 10 other local people and about 2 min later there were probably over 100 people.  It was AWESOME!

Our weekend trip was awesome.  I think it was the first time that I’ve truly felt that we were getting the African experience.  Before this, we could have been in any impoverished country and not known the difference.  But yesterday was all about elephants, lions, giraffes, sleeping in grass huts, and shaking your booty with a grass skirt (Hawaiian style!)  I felt like the trip went really well.  I feel like our pictures could tell the story a lot better than telling you about it.

   

We starting the morning out with a game drive and got way close to giraffes, elephants, antelope, a lion, and a bunch of other cool animals.  Our tour guide was named Tavan and he was great.  He certainly did not look like your typical safari tour guide.  He looked like he deserted from the war in Sudan and came to do safaris so that no one could find him.  He was wearing a full military suit and boots and carried a AK-47 or uzi or some kind of machine gun.  But he was super nice and knew a ton about all of the animals.  I guess he has been doing it for about 12 years.  He had us pull over and all jump out and took us over to a huge mound of dirt.  Then he starting kicking it open and a ton of HUGE termites came out.  He was explaining how hard they bite and picked one up.  The thing was going crazy and he had tons of blood dripping off his hands.  Then he started talking about how it was edible and he ATE it!  Worse than trying to eat an angry wasp.  So many of us wanted pictures of it that he ended up eating about five of them.  So crazy!

Our lovely grass hut

After the safari we went on a jungle cruise up the Nile river.  It was just like Disneyland.  I kept having to remind myself that Disneyland was imitating where we really were and not the other way around.  We saw tons of hippos and some huge alligators on our cruise up to the falls.  Way cool.

The dance in the evening was way fun.  It seemed like something you would see at the Polynesian cultural center with the drums and grass skirts.  They invited us all to come dance with them.  I was taking pictures of Liz when one of the ladies came up to me and put a grass skirt on.  I don’t really remember much after that but I’m told I went pretty crazy!  Just about the entire village joined us after they heard there were a bunch of crazy muzungus dancing!  Way fun.  Afterwords literally slept in a grass hut.  Quite the African experience.  The stars out there made Lake Powell look like the little stickers you put on your ceiling.