More Waterfalls and Discovering Abseiling

Uganda has been a blast. There is too much to do and see and too little time! We decided to give the "safari experience" another chance - and it's a good thing we did because it was more than worth it. We went on a three day trip to Murchison Falls National Park where we went on a four hour game drive - perfect amount of time - any longer than that trapped in a hot sticky vehicle makes you go stir crazy. On this drive we saw an entire pride of lions lying right on the road! There was seven of them - just chillin' out lying in the sun and looking pretty. We also visited the impressive falls on foot, and went on a boat trip up to the falls along the Nile observing loads of hippos and crocodiles. The crocs hang out at the bottom of the falls to get the dead fish that have fallen over the falls - easy food! We also went to a rhino sanctuary. Rhinos were poached to extinction in Uganda in the early 80s and this sanctuary is attempting to breed rhinos for eventual release into the wild starting with just six donated animals. Their first live baby (after a still born last year) was born about a week before we arrived - named "Obama". We didn't get to see the baby as the mother is too aggressive for public contact but we did get to see three rhinos - and they are much bigger and much more frightening than they look in pictures. A young male had a bit of a fit in our presence, the rangers were panicking - yelling at the rhino to stop and telling us to run in the other direction. Great fun:)

Next was Sipi Falls - we had debated about whether or not we should go there - we had after all seen a lot of water falls. The thing that changed my mind was finding out that you can do this crazy thing called abseiling there. I had never heard of abseiling before (sometimes called repelling) and I am so glad I stumbled on this experience of a lifetime. When looking for pictures of what this thing is all about I found a hilarious blog post called "More Adventures in Stupidity: Abseiling Sipi falls" I didn't find any pictures of the actual abseiling - but there I did find pictures of the impressive 100m cliff that you step off of entrusting your life to a rock climbing harness and repelling yourself to safety. Stepping off that cliff was one of the scariest things I've ever done. The view is incredible - hanging right next to the falls next to a gorgeous waterfall makes for a unique vantage point on the stunning landscape.

Next is Kenya. This is our last country, and our last month. It's no fun when you start counting "lasts". Experiencing the passage of time while traveling is nothing at all like it is at home. Time flies and drags at the same time. It seems like only last week we were counting "firsts", and also like we have been in Africa for ages.

An aside:
Many people (from home) have asked me how my parents feel about this trip - here is the exact text of an e-mail from my mother that made me laugh with subject line "your trip":

"Glad to see your last entry. I was getting worried. Don't go to Somalia. They have kidnapped a young Canadian girl (journalist) and Australian guy for ransom and will probably kill them. Hope all the sickness stuff is done for good. Stay safe and have fun. Love your blog. Love, Mom. "

Till next time...