More animal adventures

I went to Queen Elisabeth National Park this week. And yes, there were more astounding animal encounters! Queen Elisabeth is

very large- 1978 sq km. The park is in Africa’s Rift Valley- site of a fissure in the earth’s crust thousands of miles long with sinking of land in between the plates. The park is a wide, flat valley surrounded by mountains. Within the park, there are two large deep lakes (one of which is shared with Democratic Republic of Congo), which are connected by the Kasinga Chanel. We reached the park about 8:30am as our plans for an arrival near dawn were thwarted by a. the driver oversleeping and b. one of the car tires requiring air which we were unable to locate despite stopping at 8 gas stations- we finally pulled off the road to a shop where a mechanic filled the tire with a bicycle pump (this worked fine until the tire developed a flat in the middle of the park). It is against the rules of the park to hike because of the carnivorous animals so we drove after picking up a guide, Eddie, in one of the nearby villages. Within the park there are abundant Ugandan Cob, a type of antelope that is the national animal. There are also lots of warthogs and water buffalo. Most of the water buffalos we saw were in small groups of 1 or 2 and the Eddie referred to them as the ‘losers’- having lost the male fight for supremacy and, therefore, off by themselves. We did see a herd of hundreds of water buffalo- unclear to us which was the grand winner in the herd. Despite the park having 3000 elephants, though, it was surprisingly hard to find them. Ditto for the 5 prides of tree-climbing lions. But…after some hours of looking and then stopping for lunch, Eddie heard that a lion had been spotted about a kilometer from the restaurant. So we got back in the car and looked some more. Despite the fact that Eddie was driving (and the rest of us staring out the windows), he spotted a lioness in a tree about 200 feet off the road. The assumption was that the rest of the family was sleeping below her. We then took a boat ride in the channel and saw hippos, water buffalo, iguanas, mongoose, crocodiles, and thousands of birds. And after rounding a bend we came on 3 elephants cooling in the shallow water and feeding- a truly thrilling experience. We later saw more by the side of the road and we stopped to look. One elephant looked mildly annoyed (flapping ears) but appeared to be retreating- until it turned towards us, trumpeted, and started charging the car! (This is why guides say to keep the car running.). RE: the photos: You may need to enlarge the tree picture to see the hidden animal. The elephant is annoyed with us. The other picture is of a fun, interactive display at the park headquarters.