Uganda Chapter 13: "I couldn't sleep because large wild animals were grazing outsidel"

We're actually going to wrap the last two days into just one entry. To see complete sets of pictures from our days at Lake Mburo and Mihingo, click here and here!

Day 12: Leaving the rain forest and into the rain.
As I think many of us know, while I will go to the rain forest to see things that only exist in a rain forest (like Machu Picchu or, say, gorillas), I hate the rain forest. I do not like going to bed damp and waking up damp and having everything around me be damp at all times. I do not like when my hair gets frizzy and my skin breaks out. I do not like the slightly "off" feeling my digestive tract gets when in rain forests. In general, I do not enjoy the rain forest. And so while I was sad to be leaving behind a place that had given me such an amazing spiritual experience, I was not sad. To be leaving. The rain forest.

I just wanted to feel dry again. The Land Cruiser and the weather had other ideas, unfortunately.

Let me begin by saying that I had my traditional rain forest headache by the time we left. This was augmented by a slight hangover from a WINE GLASS FULL OF CAPTAIN MORGAN that I had drunk the night before (to get warm, it was the rain forest). The first two hours of the trip are on roads that even James describes as the worst roads we've been on the entire trip. I put my iPod on and try to close my eyes, but by the time we hit the "good" roads, my head feels like a soft cheese with hard iron spikes in it.

And then the Land Cruiser begins to make bad, bad noises.

We stop at a "service station," and they "fix" the problem. We drive less than half a mile, and the sound suddenly becomes worse. We stop at another service station where they determine that the alternator is bad. Lisa and I have a TWO HOUR lunch. That's an hour and a half more than we needed for lunch, and we're so bored that Lisa starts soliciting school children to come and practice English with her. But the alternator gets "fixed."

We hit the road again. Guess what? The Land Cruiser gives out again an hour later. This time, though, it's pouring down buckets of rain. James decides to fix it himself, the poor thing. In the rain. So by the time he gets done fixing the alternator, he is soaked to the bone and we still have to drive for a couple of hours. He's a super star.

We finally make it to Lake Mburo, and, even though he is wet and uncomfortable, James puts the top up on the truck and takes us for a game drive, which is killer because Lake Mburo has not only huge herds of antelope but also huge herds of ZEBRA! It's lovely.




Also lovely is Mihingo Tented Camp. It's luxury tents with a beautiful central open lodge. And it overlooks Lake Mburo National Park AND a watering hole right in the middle of the park, so from your tent veranda or the lodge you can watch herds come to water. It's really quite amazing, and, as I nod off to sleep, I am only distracted by a bug THE SIZE OF MY HAND trying to get through my mosquito netting.



Day 13: Africa gives us a gift
In the morning, Lisa gets up and takes a nature walk. I decide that it's time for me to start getting my head ready to return to real life, so I sleep until 8:00am. Then I spend the entire rest of the first half of the day lounging by the pool, drinking passionfruit juice cocktails, reading Chabon's Summerland and looking out at the watering herds. It's okay to be jealous, people, I would be too.



At 2:30pm, we leave to go on a boat ride on Lake Mburo. Our guide is a super star guide and a local celebrity and likes to refer to himself as "The Andrew." He's no Julius, but we do love him so. We see hippos, crocs, kingfishers and lots and lots of African Fisher Eagles. At one moment, a pair of African Fisher Eagles (they mate for life) takes flight right in front of us, swoops towards the water and majestically catches fish. Actually, that's not true. Only the female eagle catches a fish. The male eagle is visibly embarrassed that she caught and he didn't, and she visibly lords it over him. And yes, but this point in the trip with this much time with animals, I really do think we can read them to that point of subtlety.

After our boat ride, we are on our very last game drive -- possibly ever because you never know what the future holds. And we are sad. We are very, very, very sad. This place has been magic, and we're on the last moments. The next day truly begins our journey home.

While we were in Lake Mburo, there were lots and lots of baby animals. It was a time of year, rainy season, where grass is plentiful. And the mama animals are smart. They know that if they get pregnant to have their babies during the plentiful season, their babies will have a better chance of surviving. As we are driving, James spots a baby zebra and points it out to us. Then he takes a closer look. "That one has just been born," he says.

We drive very, very close. And by "just born" what he means is "hasn't even taken its first steps yet." The mother is still licking the newly born colt clean, and if you look closely in the pictures you can even see that the afterbirth is still hanging from her. Also, the mother can't run because the baby can't walk yet, so she has to let us get very close, though we stay a fair distance to keep from scaring them too much.

You, like me, have probably seen a dozen films of wild animals being born on the Discovery channel. And I don't want to ruin that experience for you, but it is nowhere near as miraculous as seeing it happen in the wild itself. The baby zebra stands up for the first time, and it's completely confused by its legs. And its knees buckle and wobble. And then it tries to walk and stumbles. And we watch for fifteen minutes while it learns how to use its legs. All this while, the mama zebra stares us down with a look (captured in one of the photos below) that clearly says "Don't come even one inch closer to my baby." There are two other zebras standing watch nearby. And all three animals and all three humans are enraptured by this tiny, new zebra learning to walk. And within fifteen minutes he gets it figured out and the mama noses at him to move along away from the humans.





It was really an amazing miracle to watch. James has been doing game drives in Uganda for ten years AND he grew up in a rural village where there was wildlife everywhere, and he'd never seen a newborn zebra getting up for the first time before. I have to think that the number of people living on earth who have seen a moment like that can be counted in the low three digits, if that. It really was as though Uganda was saying, "Thanks for loving our land so much. Let me show you how beautiful it can really be." There are three moments on this trip that I will never forget as long as I live. The tree lions, the gorillas, and the picture of that baby zebra as it tried to take its first steps. I just teared up even remembering it. Nature is the most beautiful thing ever created by God, Goddess or Universe.

That night we have a wonderful tillapia dinner and an inspiring conversation with Richard, an older, retired former CPA who now travels the world bird watching and sight seeing. He has been amazing places - including my dream of Antarctica. And then we are off to sleep in tents under the African sky for what I can only pray will not be the last time in my life. That night, I am visited outside of my tent by an angry monkey, two grazing warthogs and two loud, huge grazing water buffalo. I barely sleep with all of their noise, and I'm thankful for that. I want to be awake through one last African night. I can sleep on the plane. I am now in my last moments of feeling the way the air in Africa feels when it comes through a tent flap, or hearing the night sounds of wild animals, or having the gentle night protection of mosquito netting.

Tomorrow, we travel home and it is...

We're actually going to wrap the last two days into just one entry. To see complete sets of pictures from our days at Lake Mburo and Mihingo, click here and here!