April 25, 2015

We thought our Safari experience couldn’t get any better than seeing 2 lions plus a cub on our first outing, but we were wrong. The day started out with a lovely boat cruise up the Victoria Nile where we saw lots of croccodiles, hippos, birds, and other animals watering down by the river.

Many animals came to the riverside for water- I just love to capture photos showing multiple animals species- here we have elephants, cape buffalo, jackson hardebeest

Then after a nice refreshing dip in the pool and another yummy lunch, we embarked on our final game drive. This time, not only did we see 2 lionesses with their cubs, but we also saw 2, yes, you read that correctly, 2 leopards!!

I couldn’t have posed this picture better if I tried.

A warthog family- notice the nursing baby in the background- although we think of “Pumba” as the name of the warthog in Disney’s Lion King movie, the locals call the warthog- Pumba. I think it is the Swahili name for the animal.

Leopards are shy creatures and stay up on high branches in Acacia Trees all day and they are usually not near the vehicle paths. Our wonderful tour guide, though, seemed to have the eye for the leopards because he spotted 2 of them for us. The first was quite far and only 2 of us had cameras that could pick them up. But,we all had a great view through the guides binoculars.

This Mama had 2 cubs and boy were they playful.

As we watched the 2 cubs ran under a bush for awhile and then all of a sudden, they sprung out and just hopped on top of the Mama- it was so cute!

The 2nd leopard, though, was much closer and even my point and shoot automatic camera with only a modest zoom lens picked it up. Check out the photo!  All in all, the weekend was fabulous and although we saw lots of animals, we left Murchison eager to go back another time.

This leopard shot is from my camera-and you can definitely make out the leopard in the distance on the tree branch

Now we’ve safely reached Kampala and had to say goodbye to one of our party- Hanna’s flight leaves shortly to head back to the USA.  Tomorrow night we will say goodbye to Lizzie and Amanda, then Kristen and I will be left to carry out some work for the Makerere Pharmacy School.  More on that later this week. For now, enjoy some more animal photos.

This amazing picture is from Hanna’s camera- there is no doubt we saw this leopard. He just watched us intently as we gazed at him for about 20 min.