A safari van came to pick us up at Budongo Forest for the last phase of our trip. The really exciting part.... it was a NINE passenger van, with luggage space in back. You will notice that we have six bottoms between us, and all of our other cars had no more than four spaces for bottoms to go! It was a relief to let the kids stretch out, wiggle, and nap. The other exciting thing about it being a genuine safari van was that the top opened up, so when we saw animals we could just stand up and look out the top, with no windows or car parts in the way. On our final drive out of the park, we were looking for lions, and everyone ended up standing up to scout out the top the whole time. I guess it's safe to tell Daddy, because no one fell out and died! They were good hold-er-on-ers. Except for Buttercup, who was in Gramma's arms, but kept pushing the arms off in order to "me do it," and then declared that she wanted to "go dere" to the other side of the van, sans Gramma!
As we drove into the park, we stopped to hike to the Top of the Falls. This park is down in a valley and at a lower elevation than most of Uganda, and it is mostly open savanna, so it is MUCH more hot than what we are used to! Even my little African girls were melting in the sun. To get to the lookout was a short little hike, but it was steep and it was hot, and we were all flagging. Hibiscus somehow got the walking stick from one of the guides, and she looked like a little Zulu warrior princess, striding along with her long bare legs and her stick! She is actually short for her age, but she has that long-limbed build that makes her look tall and elegant. Gramma had brought sunhats for all the children, which added considerably to the adorable-ness factor as well!
We admired the viewpoints and were headed back when a rainstorm hit us. And can it ever rain! It's like a bathtub coming down from the sky, except so nice and cool and refreshing! I would have actually enjoyed it, except I was worried about the camera not appreciating a bath. We actually had a terrible time with cameras on this trip. My husband had brought a new telephoto lens for our DSLR, specifically for animal photos but it also captures the children's faces very well. It took beautiful photos of the rhinos and the children playing on the first day, and then mysteriously stopped working. Then a couple days later the lens on my parents' point-and-shoot also stopped working, and of course you can't change the lens on that one! So we started with four camera options, and ended with only two, with our favorite ones going out of service!
Of course, the rainstorm ended right as we got back to the car. We regrouped and headed back out to the close-to-the-falls viewpoint, and saw a beautiful rainbow.
Then we went up to our camp, which is the only non-five-star accommodation in the park. The Red Chilli Rest Camp has a large grass-thached restaurant area, room for pitching tents, wall tents, and a few concrete bandas. We were given the key to a family banda, which has a small common area, two small bedrooms, and a not-very-clean bathroom with a very large shower. It was perfect for us, and really a relief to not have to go back and forth between two different areas. However, it turned out that they had told us that six people wouldn't fit in a family banda (despite there being six beds!) and that we needed to book two bandas, but then the manager forgot to give us the key to the second one until we were busy going to bed. Now, when you are busy putting three wildly over-tired children to bed while organizing all your equipment for the next day and hanging a clothesline around the room for damp clothing, do you really want to go carry half your stuff across the lawn to a different banda? No, you do not. Maybe if you have the kind of grandparents who enjoy admiring their cute grandchildren from a distance, but we are very VERY blessed with grandparents who do things like take a shower with the children and get down on her hands and knees so the girls can do her shampooing! The toilet might not have flushed properly, but we got some really good mileage out of that giant shower area!
Also, the Rest Camp had a laundry station. After five days of travelling, complete with an unexpected beach, everything we had was REALLY DIRTY. One of those random things that drives me crazy is dirty clothes. I don't like feeling it on my body, and I don't like seeing it on my children. I don't mind children (or me) GETTING dirty, but I hate cleaning up but not having clean clothes to put on. So it was a great relief to fill up some tubs and attack those clothes! However, it also inspired me to say a very passionate prayer of thanksgiving that our apartment is equipped with a washing machine! Three children make a LOT of laundry for one mama!
The camp is just some buildings on a hill in the wilderness, which means that there are all kinds of animals all over. They seemed much more accustomed to humans than in Budongo Forest. There were warthogs sleeping under the trees, just feet from the restaurant, the baboons looked even more avaricious and greedy, and apparently hippos like to graze in front of our cabin at night! Once when I came out of the banda to join the family in the restaurant, I had to wait for a family of warthogs to finish wandering by. We didn't actually see any hippos, but the possibility of them being there was another excellent reason to not be lodged in separate bandas! But apparently the hippos and the warthogs keep the grass down, because there was a nice small lawn in front of our patio, and the children had some chances to play velcro-ball and Mother May I, with their wonderful playing grandparents.
The theme of these wilderness resort restaurants seems to be that they offer three options for dinner, and you order your meals and the time you want them ahead of time. Dining out for days on end, especially with little children, is never easy, but this practice makes it go a lot more smoothly. It means as soon as you manage to drag your crew to the dining area, the staff brings over your meal within a few minutes. We just ate everything family style, which meant that we passed the plates around and everyone got some of whatever they wanted. Including things like two kids hovering over a plate while Emerson carefully picks out the noodles and Hibiscus carefully picks out the vegetables while the parents yell things like "please use your fork!" and are ignored. Except Hibiscus didn't like the peppers, but instead of avoiding them she speared them and headed them off towards what she deemed a more appreciative mouth, so suddenly there was a sauce-soaked chunk of green pepper hovering over Buttercup's head toward's Bubba's cheek, or diving over all the water glasses at my forehead.
While we're on the subject, I have mentioned that the children are becoming much better behaved and controlled, but they still get the Five-o-Clock Exhaustion. Especially Hibiscus. By the end of the day, she is just a walking, manic disaster. And clumsy!!! Oh my goodness, is she ever clumsy! Her fork is on her head and her elbow is in her dinner and her feet are up by her head, and as she walks across the room everything within a ten-foot radius magically falls on the floor or becomes crooked or breaks into a million pieces. I have read books wherein the heroine is awkward and pathetic as a child -- I think Anne of Green Gables was one -- and how they are always being scolded. Living with a child like that, I suddenly have an overwhelming empathy for the children AND the scolding parents. I understand that she has poor motor control and poor impulse control and her brain neurons aren't all connected in the right place, but somewhere in the sea of broken glass and puddles of water and a sibling crying because their dinner ended up on the floor (how did she even get to that side of the table?!), the empathizing-with-Anne-Shirley patience is about worn out.
The next morning we had to get up EVEN EARLIER than our Budongo Forest early, to be across the river soon after dawn. I will let you imagine our early morning craziness!
We picked up our pre-ordered breakfast, including two styrofoam cups of delicious tea. Mmm, drinking tea makes everything better! Usually our van would drive us the quarter-mile or so to the river, but the car ferry was supposedly grounded so the driver kept the car on the other side, where we needed it. So we all walked down to the boat yard, where the driver was very surprised and pleased to see us there on time. Actually, we were 15 minutes after he had asked us to arrive, but still 15 minutes before the ferry left, which is early by African standards! And then it turned out that the car ferry did leave that morning, but after that we took small boat shuttles.
We went over to the other side and organized ourselves to get into our car. Gramma had most of our luggage, I had the girls with me, and Bubba was carrying one of our lunch bags in his hand. Hibiscus called out "look, baboon!" and squashed closer to me, but Bubba didn't hear, and before any of us knew what happened the baboon ran right up to him, grabbed the bag out of his hand and ran off with it. He quickly tore it open, gobbled up all our chapatis, and ran off with the other packet of food. Cue the children's pandemonium!! But they WANTED the chapatis, they wanted to EAT them, they didn't WANT the baboon to get our chapatis!!! Luckily Gramma had the other bag of food and we still had some breakfast left, because there wasn't anywhere to get any! But the beloved chapatis were very much gone.
Now all the children hate baboons passionately, which I am not sure we adults disagree about! Hibiscus is determined to punish the entire species by not allowing anyone to take their picture any more! I still had visions of them grabbing the children and plucking their eyes out, which I did not share with the children in question, but they suddenly became pretty good about not wandering far from an adult's side! Gramma and I took the children off to the potty house a little distance away, and we saw the baboons closing in. I personally think they were eyeing Buttercup's fat little legs hanging out of the wrap and debating whether it was another Red Chilli breakfast package! The baboons didn't care when the children screeched at them, but I used my best "bad dog" voice a few times and they slunk away. When Bubba was with us, he only had to stand up and loom a little bit, and they decided to keep their distance! It was a relief to know that they really would be intimidated.
Finally we got in the van and drove around looking for animals. The scenery was also beautiful; a wide savanna, but dotted with trees and bushes, and rolling hills in every direction and blue mountains in the distance. We were off before 7:30 AM, so it was still nice and cool.
We saw some elephants from a little distance, lots of giraffes close up, and herd after herd of hartebeest, Ugandan kob, and buffalo, and tiny little Oribi and dyker antelope bounding around. We had interesting discussions about whether they are Uribi or Oridi or something else, and the girls loved the idea of dykers because they thought they were DIAPER antelope, which of course is very funny!! We ended up at the hippo pool, with an elephant on the far side and lots of birds nearby. We also saw some beautiful birds, both large spectacular ones, and small colorful, graceful ones.
When we got back across the river to the camp, everyone was very ready for their lunch. However, they also had too many wiggles and wouldn't settle down for a nap or even a rest, which we thought would be a good idea after waking up before 6. When does a parents' opinion about sleep have any validity? We had some tantrums, but no rest.
So before anyone was ready, we headed back down to the water for our river cruise. This was also a spectacular event, and we sat on the upper deck and saw lots of wildlife come down for a drink, bazillions of hippos relaxing in the river, crocodiles, and all kinds of birds. The boat went right along the bank most of the time and stopped whenever we were close to something interesting, which was very nice. The journey ended looking up at the giant and spectacular Murchison Falls.
We also had three children on TOTAL MANIC mode. The older ones were somewhat entertained for a little while by doing their coloring books and going downstairs to the bathroom, but that did not last for the four-hour trip. The animals probably merited a .74 second glance apiece, which also did not take up the entire trip! One very fortuitous activity was the chance to drive the boat, which took up multiple minutes and merited actual smiles. Gramma was an amazingly patient crayon-hander-out-er and general peace-keeper, who managed to keep all of our belongings from slipping out of little hands into the mighty river below. Self-selected activities included putting on all the life jackets in sight and laying on the deck (underneath the 37 pairs of adult feet wandering around), bounding around wildly, and climbing the walls. Literally. Since the walls were what kept the children from falling into the river, this activity was not adult-endorsed, and we had the one total melt-down of the trip when I had to sit on Hibiscus while she screamed bloody murder, because whenever I got off her she plunged towards the stairs or the river. I told you we provide entertainment everywhere we go!
And what about Buttercup? Here, my friends, I tell you: BABYWEARING FOR THE WIN!!! Her little feet did not even touch the deck for the entire trip, which meant she was the only child who was in no danger of falling overboard. Since her toddler enthusiasm for "me do it" involves arching herself over backwards and flinging herself around randomly, this was necessary; I think the older children actually understood that falling overboard was highly undesirable and USUALLY made an effort to not do it! I started Buttercup off in a hip carry where she could look around with me, but actually what she wanted to do was jump around hysterically and grab everything in sight, so we switched to a nice secure back carry, which she successfully could not even kind of jump out of for the entire four hours. And believe me, she tried! She wanted to color and she wanted to run around, and for all I know she wanted to go pet a hippo. Lacking that, she put on sunglasses and she threw them down, she nibbled on cookies and dropped them down my back, she screeched and chattered. But what was the most fascinating? What was right in front of her. She pulled my ponytail and grabbed my ears, and she grabbed my shirt in her little teeth and reared her head around. It was quite something! If that sounds annoying, it pretty much was, but we were well compensated by the part about her being out of the way and safe!
Meanwhile, the scenery was beautiful and we got to see some wonderful animals and birds. We saw some colorful bee-eaters and kingfishers up very close (oh, how I missed my big lens!), but after I checked my birding list from the Queen Elizabeth boat ride, I was a little disappointed that I didn't have any new birds to add to it. But soon after that discovery, we saw many Yellow Billed Kites circling overhead, and while we watched the falls some rare Rock Pranticles were on the rock next to us, and on the way back we got to see the Saddle Billed Stork, whose amazing beak is the colors of the Ugandan flag. So my newly developing birding habit was satisfied!
We made it home. We made it to dinner. We even made it into bed! Then we had to get up equally early the next morning in hopes of seeing animals on our way out of the park.
On our second game drive we did not see any new animals, and we didn't spend as much time close up. We saw some new and beautiful scenery on another side of the park, and the driver said that lions like to hang out in the underbrush in that area. Apparently the lions didn't feel like hanging around the road that day, which wasn't terribly surprising, given that they have a giant park to meander through and no other guides had seen a lion near the road. We all had fun hanging out the top of the van looking for them, though!
Once we were out of the park, it was still a long drive home. We got to see another small waterfall when we crossed back over the Nile, and some more monkeys and baboons, and some small villages with traditional mud and thatched houses. The driver said the villages were small and spread apart because this area had been decimated by insurgencies and warfare, which has only recently been resolved.
Apparently our whole trip was just the right length! On our last two journeys, when hearing that a car was coming, the children asked where we were going and cried out that they didn't want to go back to Ggaba, they wanted to see more animals. However, on our last drive, the children were whining that they were tired and they wanted to go home.
Wish granted! We made it home and back to our own beds before dark, with time to run around the yard (for the kids) and take a trip to market (for me). And I had that pleasant sensation of familiarity and relief of being in a place that I knew, with the familiar fields and goats and rutted roads around me. I had been feeling tired and disconnected about the non-home-ness of my Ugandan home recently, so perhaps the whole trip was worth it just for the sense of "coming home" to my African home.
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