Mweya Safari Adventure

Last Sunday we went to Mweya—a beautiful lodge in Queen Elizabeth game park, south of Fort Portal. It was so much fun! We arrived Sunday afternoon, and of course, on our way there we stopped at the EQUATOR to take pictures. We enjoyed a wonderful quiet dinner with the Cash’s (someone was watching the kids), and the food was excellent. We decided to get up at 6 am for our safari (they say it is best to go out when it is cool-early morning or late afternoon to see the animals). Well, we hit the jackpot! Jeff said we were very lucky-it was our first time there and we saw animals that he has only seen twice—and he has been there about 30 times!



We got to see hyenas, elephants, water buck, Ugandan kob, cape buffalo, a leopard, a male lion, and the warthogs were everywhere (even just outside our hotel room!) We were out driving for a about 3 hours and we were really wanting to hunt down a lion. We went all over the place until we were so hungry for breakfast that we started to head back to the lodge. We were going pretty fast, not really looking for anything and then as we got close to the lodge, Andrew spotted a dead animal, or so he thought. Jeff backed up a little and it was a lion just resting in the perfect picture spot. I think he was posing just for us! We got some good pictures of many of the animals.


Later on that afternoon, after swimming in the pool, eating a delicious pizza for lunch and resting on my nice bed (don’t you feel sorry for me that I’m “roughing it” out here?) we went on a boat launch. It lasted two hours and took us through the channel that runs through the game park.

From the boat, we saw lots of hippos

a crocodile

some beautiful birds

and more elephants.


It was truly amazing to see them in their natural habitat. The boat ride was really cool! Issac and I were having a good time on the boat.



On Tuesday, we had the lodge pack some lunches for us so that we could go on one last safari drive on the way home. We stopped at a camp site and ate lunch and we were pretty disappointed because we had not seen much on the drive. After finishing lunch we got back in the vehicles and began to head home when we spotted something emerging from the trees ahead of us. Here is a picture of what we saw.



We almost ran our truck into one of the elephants because they were shielded so well by the trees. We counted about 15 elephants in this one spot (not 200 yards from where we were just eating lunch). We had to slowly back up because the elephants had babies with them and they were getting a little agitated at us. We eventually made it past the herd of elephants and continued on our way. We had not gone more than 100 yards when we spotted another large herd of elephants on the other side of the road. We got a rough count of about 30 elephants in all that we saw up close and personal on our way home. It turned out to be a great safari weekend!

We were very blessed to be able to see this part of Uganda. The beauties of the landscape and all the wildlife was a great reminder of the glory of God the creator. Uganda is a beautiful place in need of the Gospel of Christ. Keep praying for us as well seek to discover what God has planned for our lives in Uganda.