Paraa - Day 1

Safariiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!
We put in a lot of leg work to make this trip to Murchison Falls Nat'l Park happen and it was worth it. When it became clear that we weren't going to get a ton of help from Rotary with the planning, Steve and I took over to ensure that it happened. Alex, Amelia, Steve and I (Kristi and Tim opted out) arranged to leave EARLY Saturday morning hoping to make it to the park before the 12 o'clock ferry so we could have lunch and then leisurely find our afternoon boat cruise at 2pm. Given our experiences thus far, we should've realized the chances of that happening were very small. And we would've been right.
We didn't leave Kampala until 7:30am because our driver arrived with a vehicle containing no fuel. We figured the arrangement would be arrive with a full tank, leave it with a full tank. Nope. So we were keenly aware of how much gas it took to get there so that we would've overpay for gas on the way back. We arrived at the ferry at 1pm and waited for our boat cruise to take off at 2pm.*

* The ferry takes you across the Nile (south side to north side), which is where our lodge was located. It leaves every hour, on the hour, except at 1pm due to lunch breaks. So obviously we would arrive exactly at 1pm. Instead of eating lunch at the lodge and walking back for the cruise, the four of us shared three protein bars and some water. Ahhh, traveling.

Things turned around after we arrived. The boat cruise was fantastic. As you can see from the pictures, we saw a billion hippos, several enormous crocodiles, cape buffalo, water bucks, birds, warthogs, elephants and Murchison falls. The weather was cool and partly sunny, which made the trip comfortable and extremely successful.
The cruise was over around 5pm, so we found our way up to the lodge to unpack and relax. It was absolutely ideal. We sat in the pool for over an hour, had a couple beers at the swim-up bar, met a few other groups of people and tried to soak up the autonomy as much as possible. After dinner there was a small group of musicians and dancers who were performing near a bonfire next to the pool. We were pulled into the dance circle and had a good time until everything disbanded. We then hung out at the bar for a while before heading to bed. 
Pool...Hot shower...National Park...Guiness...Music...Yessssssssss....


The safari (or game drive) was the next morning. Read part two for details!