The Adventures of Eliza Thornberry!

This past weekend, we all had the incredible opportunity to go on a real life African Safari.  I’d be lying if I said we all hadn’t been looking forward to the safari the entire trip- heck, most of us had been looking forward to it since we got accepted to the program! We had safari-itis all week and once we got through a long week of school work, we had our bible study Thursday and topped it off with The Proposal and Definitely, Maybe before going to bed with visions of zebras and giraffes dancing in our heads.

On Friday we woke up bright and early to leave the house at 6.  I wore my white canvas safari hat, Andrea’s fake binoculars, Emmie tan capris, and my Tevas. Hashtagsosafari. We all packed our lunches and got our backpacks to load into the safari cars waiting in our driveway.  There were three cars of a lovely variety of green shades, and I ended up in the dark green smallest but roughest and toughest car with Andrea and Emmie and our SLC’s Kat and Mitch.  We started our journey and got to Akagera National Park around like 9ish, and the first thing we saw before even entering the park was a ton of zebras! We stopped the car and our driver Jean-Lui opened up the roof so we could get on top.  In our car, the room popped up about a foot and then had a rack on the front you could sit on, and then a little ledge on the back of the roof you could sit on.  After climbing up, we all looked at all the many zebras surrounding us.  They were so beautiful, and their stripes are such an incredible design by God. After snapping some pictures, we rode into the park, spotting some African Crowned cranes and Maribou storks on the way, and then signed our lives away, and began the rest of the safari.  Cosette came out of her very crowded car to sit on the roof with me, since Emmie and Andrea were sitting on the back and I was all alone.  The rack was just bars and the roads were pretty bumpy, so we were continuously caught between holding on for dear life, talking about how awesome this all was, and getting bruises on our butts.  The park was BEAUTIFUL. The scenery was almost even better than the animals! We started out our journey in the park with seeing some impala, which basically just look like deer from home with black stripes on their butts.  We drove on, spotting little monkeys and warthogs before going off roading (Side note, being in the front of the first car was so amazing.  We got to see more animals than everyone else-sorry!- because our car got to see them before they got scared away).  Our car went off the path into the distance to see the animals found there.  Holding on for dear life over the bumps, we saw tiny blotches in the distance turn into water buffalo, water buck, impala, zebras, and tons of white birds.  It was incredible to be so close to so many animals, but the best was yet to come.  Our driver, Jean-Lui, told us that the tiny dots in the distance were giraffes and that we were going over to see them.  Cosette and I were so excited, and spent the drive there trying to differentiate between the blobs to figure out how many giraffes we would see.  Our three cars split up to surround the four Masai giraffes, and seeing these huge creatures in this valley of the park was one of the most amazing experiences on this trip so far.  I never realized that giraffes “shoulders” are higher up than their “hips” or how insanely awesome their spots are.  After taking pictures and just admiring the beautiful creatures, we headed back.  We spotted tons more impala and warthogs, which are hilarious creatures.  First, they look exactly like Pumbaa. Well done Disney. Second, they’re fast, and their run just looks like they're trotting along very hurriedly.  And third, their babies are SO cute.  So we saw them, some colorfully cheeked baboons, and many antelope- who have awesome antlers! After that, we began a very exciting part of our journey- elephant chasing.  First of all, I love elephants.  I’ve really wanted to see an elephant on our safari, even though we were told many times that it’s really rare to see them. So when our driver said that he was on the track of elephants and we passed multiple piles of elephant poop, I allowed myself to get a bit excited.  All of a sudden, we saw two blobs in the distance that were ELEPHANTS! AHH! So exciting.  While we couldn’t get too close, we were so lucky to see them, and I was extremely overjoyed. They were so incredible to watch munching on the grass and just being elephants.  After watching them, we began to drive to have lunch somewhere, and our car chased muddy warthogs! Cosette and I either thought we were going to fall  off the roof or kill a warthog, but thankfully neither happened and we just had a great laugh at the panicked muddy creatures.  Then we passed many hippos poking their heads out of the water and stopped nearby to have lunch.

After lunch, we loaded back up for some afternoon safari-ing.  We saw three more giraffes and a bunch more impala before driving around for a few hours towards our camp site.  We didn’t see much in that time, the road was super bumpy, and we were dodging sharp tree branches left and right, and when we went over a bump and my whole spine cracked, I got back into the safari car.  After driving around and seeing some birds (plus a rainbow!), we got to our campsite. Holy guacamole! It was this absolutely gorgeous site with a fire pit and gazebo and plenty of room for tents overlooking a lake.  Emmie and I went to work setting up our two person tent, as the other girls sent up their one minute set up mansion tents.  Emmie and I looked down at our confusing tent that is clearly made for one person and just started laughing, and moved our stuff into the giant brand new tents.  After a quick nature walk with Mikey, Ross, and Andrea, we all sat down by the fire to enjoy delicious potato soup made by Aidah and naan by Andrea. Yum.  To conclude the night, we had quiz night safari edition, some popcorn, and snuggling.  The next morning, many of us woke up to watch the sunrise over the lake, which was pretty blocked by clouds but still beautiful, and then we rewoken up by Aidah letting us know the porridge was getting cold.  We had some breakfast and packed up our site and headed off for safari again.  We drove through incredible scenery, with Andrea as my safari friend this drive, and saw more animals, including an ADORABLE baby baboon. We saw one of the old president’s vacation home in the park, and had some lunch by a lake surrounded by Maribou storks- those terrible things found all over Kampala.   After our mayonnaise and mustard or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, we said goodbye to the baboons (“Those people throw their food to the baboons.  I throw my bottles to beat them.” –Aidah) and all the other animals, and headed back to Kigali- not without having a contest to see who could stand up out the roof the longest.  We got back to Kigali to find Michael and Adele Pucci, the directors of our program, back at our house, which was joyous! …. And then Ross broke the hammock chair.

So here's some pictures! The group shot and picture of my car are thanks to Lindsay and the one of me is thanks to Cosette.  PS and by the way, choosing pictures for this blog was SO difficult, and I couldn't put in near as many as I wanted. That being said, when I'm home, if you want to see my safari pictures, I'd be more than willing to show you... Here's at least some though!

Emmie, Andrea, Cosette, and me
 in our safari car!

ZEBRAS!

Water buffalo!

Yesyesyesyes. Giraffes.

Elephant (obviously...)!

More giraffes!

Hungry Hungry Hippos

Baboon and a snack. I'm pretty proud of this one...

Storm on the left, beautiful day on the right!

Sunrise over the lake at our campsite.

Baboon and baby baboon! ahh!

Group shot! Us all, our SLC's, and Aidah!

Ready for Safari!

Aidah, Mikey, Andrea, and me at our campground.