Advice for the rookie contact wearer: when swimming, don’t open your eyes. If you do, you will dislodge your contact and it will get twisted up in under your eyelid and then when you take it out and try to reinsert it, the Ugandan breezes will keep blowing it off the tip of your finger and you’ll finally have to put it in your mouth to carry it back to the hotel room where you can try again with good lighting, a mirror, and eyedrops. And you’ll waste 10 valuable minutes of peace and quiet by the hotel pool while everyone else is away looking for lions.
No, I’m not out looking for lions. I am basking in the glorious warmth of the setting sun, overlooking a body of water named after King Edward or Prince George or maybe it’s King George (in Queen Elizabeth park) completely by myself. I have reliable wifi for the first time since leaving Abu Dhabi and after spending 16+ hours over the past 2 days in a safari vehicle on very bumpy roads, the last thing I wanted to do after arriving was get back in the car to search for lions for 2 more hours. Even if I were promised a view of lions chasing down an antelope and dragging the kill back to the cutest pack of baby lion cubs ever created, I still would have taken a pass. Stretching out on the deck by the pool is on my list of trip highlights. I’ll check out some Animal Planet when I get home to fill in the gaps.
Has our trip been wonderful so far? Yes, absolutely. Have I seen enough animals to make me happy? Yes, absolutely. More than enough. And we still have another game drive tomorrow morning, a boat trip to look for animals tomorrow afternoon, and the more game drives after that. (A game drive is when you put the top up on the safari van and bounce along dirt roads or across brushy plains and stop whenever you see animals.) I’ve preferred the animals we’ve seen en route to the hotel or as we are headed to the lake for a boat excursion than just the extra driving around looking for animals. Multitasking at its best. I must not be a safari-er at heart. I know this is sacrilegious, but when I’ve had enough of riding in the van (such as when we hit hour 8 yesterday) I start playing solitaire on my phone because there’s only so much of dirt roads and grass and villages that I can bear to take in. #solitaireisfuntoo
Carter on the other hand, got up early this morning because he “didn’t come to Africa to sleep in” and went on an extra 2 hour long game drive, before the 6 hour drive to our next hotel, and then hopped right back in the car for 2 hours with the lions in the late afternoon. God bless him. I slept in, had coffee delivered to my treehouse style tent, ate breakfast overlooking an animal watering hole, and thoroughly enjoyed my 2 hours of relaxation before bracing myself to go bumping down the Ugandan clay roads. I think you’ll agree that I’ve seen plenty of animals:
