Queen Elisabeth National Park - Elephants

  Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda
Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Beautiful sunrise in Queen Elizabeth

After our incredible experience with the Gorillas we headed further north to get to Queen Elisabeth National Park. This park has tree climbing lions and "normal" lions. We did unfortunately not see any of them as there are only around 200 hundred in the whole park. We did hear one roar though, but we could not see it.

A herd of elephants quite close

We went on an early morning gamedrive, so we left camp before sunrise and slowly made our way across the national park. One of the first sightings was probably also the best that day. We came across a large group of elephants walking towards the lake and crossing the road just behind us. A second there it looked like they were coming straight at us. We had of course stopped the truck so we could watch these massive creatures make their way towards the lake.

Ugandan Cob

After seeing the elephants we continued to the mating ground for the Ugandan Cob. Here individual males had tiny territories, where they stood waiting for the females to choose them. We saw a male cob making several, but failed attempts, mounting a female, who apperently could not care less about what was going on.

Hippo 2

After we got back to camp and had breakfast we kicked back and relaxed until around 3pm. There we were going down to the channel connecting the two lakes for a boat trip. Here we saw hundreds of birds, a lot of hippos, several crocodiles, buffalos, elephants, lizards, eagles. Often you just see the nostrils of a hippo above water, but luckily we saw several hippos opening the mouths in a wide yawn and one getting out of the water.

Next stop .. Kibale and Chimpansee trekking.