My Easter Escape.

A belated Happy Easter to everyone!

As my Easter holidays were my last long ones until I am back in the land of coldness. I nipped over the border to Uganda to appreciate being so close to such  beautiful and interesting countries.

 I flew to Entebbe to meet my Mum and Dad….. It was very strange being met from a 2 hour flight by my Mum and Dad. We spent the next few nights staying  in Kampala.

We visited Kira Farm that is a charity who uses the farm to give teenagers the chance to live there for a year and learn practical skills like sewing, woodwork, farming and tailoring so that they can go back to their homes with skills that can earn them money.

In Kampala, we also visited the Kasubi Tombs were the last for kings bugando (a large area of Uganda) are buried. 

We then travelled west to Kibale Forest National Park where we stayed in a lodge literally in the forest.  We could sit just outside the door of our rooms and watch Red Colobus, Black and White Colobus and L’Hoest monkeys enjoying the fruits on the trees. We were also joined by lots of beautiful birds and butterflies. I did the spotting and Mum and Dad did the identification! 

Our lodge surrounded by forest!

This was a little visitor on the wall of our room.

This family of baboons were blocking the road as we drove to t he lodge.

  

Sadly the Chimpanzees didn’t come and join us for breakfast so we had to trek into the forest where we joined them eating their breakfast of figs. We discovered that chimpanzees are very messy eaters as while we were watching them in the treetops we had to dodge the falling figs.  They also decided that the treetops were their toilet but we manage to avoid the lovely golden showers!

They were enjoying their breakfast so they spent most of the time in the treetops but 3 large males did climb down the tree trunks to join us on the floor. We frantically pushes through the undergrowth to follow them. I found myself at the front the line of people trying to follow them and as I got within about 3 metres of a huge male our guide was saying ‘Just keep going’. I proceeded with caution! We followed them until they got to the second course of breakfast, large bean like seeds. They looked like the size of normal monkeys in the tree tops but they looked much bigger when we were walking behind them. 

The next day the wellies were back on and waterproofs on for a walk in a swamp. 

We then travelled  south beside the spectacular Ruwenzori Mountains to Queen Elizabeth National Park.

We crossed the equator to enter the park that we explored for the morning.

A family of lions were using the road.

Staring competitions with Buffalo.

Crested Cranes the national symbol of Uganda.

Mongooses. They decided that under our safari van was a lovely warm place to run and hide.

After lunch inside the park we took a boat ride down the Kazinga Channel which links Lake Edward and Lake George, two large lake inside the National Park.

 

A large industry in this area is salt which they collect from the salt lakes. We visited Lake Katwe to see how they extract the salt. They spend hours in the water getting chunks of salt from the  bottom of the lake. We also stopped on our journey to watch a women making lovely baskets.

 

After a long drive through the border of Uganda and Tanzania we caught the over night ferry from Bukoba back to Mwanza.

We spent Easter weekend at a very beautiful and peaceful place over looking lake Victoria.  We enjoyed a  canoe ride on the lake, lovely meals with incredible views and lots of relaxing time.

Our view as we enjoyed our dinner.

We were served breakfast on the veranda just outside our rooms and were joined by lots of greedy weaver birds who like to help themselves to out leftover crumbs and butter! 

  

Unfortunately I had to  go back to work after a very relaxing weekend so I left Mum and Dad to explored the sights and sounds of Mwanza. 

I had a wonderful time on my last holiday adventure. I now only have 10 weeks to go until I fly back to England. I will be trying to appreciate all the things I love about living here including lapping up as much African sunshine as I can,