27th January - Transfer to Queen Elizabeth NP

We said a sad farewell to Noline and Tony and set off for Queen Elizabeth NP this morning.  We had a stop off in Fort Portal to visit an ATM before continuing our journey south.  The road surface wasn’t great so it took quite a long time.  We eventually got to the park at about lunch time and enjoyed our pack lunch at the rangers gate.

Old bull buffalo enjoying a mud bath

The park is 1973 km squared but less than half of it is inhabited by wild animals as the western side of the park where our lodge is has been taken over by invasive grass and tree species which the native animals won’t eat.  So, our game drive was restricted to the eastern side of the park near Lake George.  Apparently, the park used to be known as Kazinga NP, but was renamed QE after the visit on 30th April 1954 of The Queen and Prince Philip.

Thick Knees seeing off a monitor lizard

We drove around for several hours but didn’t see a lot.  It’s a very open landscape - lots of low dry grass punctuated with huge Euphorbia trees surrounded by scrubby bush.  We were told that the lions and leopards like to lie in the Euphorbia trees but didn’t see any.  We saw a few buffaloes including a very old male having a mud bath, some Ugandan Kob and a few birds.  When we got to Lake George, we saw a young monitor lizard being mobbed by Thick Knee birds who hate them as they eat their eggs, which was most enjoyable.

Leopard in the distance

We started our 30km drive to the lodge when Shindishi spotted a large male leopard sitting upright by some shrubbery about 150 metres away.  He eventually moved into the long grass and then laid down so all we could see was his head - a black blob in the far distance with normal eyesight.  He then started calling other guides to tell them where we were so we had to sit there doing nothing for about 30 minutes until they joined us.  We knew what would happen next and were only too right.  The other car roared up at great speed in a huge dust plume.  There was some quick chatting and suddenly we both shot forward at great speed towards the leopard who unsurprisingly shot off into thick undergrowth.  Shindishi screeched to a halt and asked if we’d managed to get more good photos of the leopard running!!!  It was ridiculous as we had to focus on hanging on tightly rather than taking photos.  We were all most annoyed by the whole experience.

We then set off to the lodge and saw some striped mongoose and a large herd of elephant in the dusk on route.  We arrived at the lodge at 7pm rather than the promised 6pm feeling rather tired and very dusty and hot.  Chris let Shindishi know what we thought of him and the other car charging the leopard, so goodness knows what he made of that.  We were offered an early morning game drive back at Lake George which meant getting up before 6am!!  We declined and said we wanted to chill out at the lodge especially as we didn’t think there was much more to see anyway.  Poor Shindishi disappeared looking a bit crestfallen.

We had a drink and dinner and then went to bed at 9.30pm as were all exhausted.  Chris managed a shower before bed to get rid of the dust but I was too knackered to even do that.