Saturday, July 19, 2008

Safari Day, Part One: Water

Today we head out on the Nile - the Nile! - on a water safari. We board a small cruise boat, cameras poised. (This is around the time that I start to wish I had a Canon Rebel with a couple of big-ass specialty lenses, and not my little point and shoot 3X zoom digital camera. Fortunately, many of my tripmates do have amazing cameras, and we've all agreed to share photos.)



Our guide is the quiet type - he knows all the good spots to take us, but he doesn't say much. We cruise around the shoreline, searching for wildlife. I spot the first few hippos, floating, enjoying the sun. We then realize they are everywhere. We see hundreds of them.


As we're floating along, we are scanning both the waters and the shore for signs of life. Katie is keeping count of how many we see of what, so we can report back to other travellers. On the shore we see warthogs, baboons, antelope, elephants, and water buffalo. Looking through the binoculars, I am blown away by what I'm seeing. How amazing to get to see wild animals like these in their own habitat - it's like watching the National Geographic channel, except live, and eighty million times cooler. I start fantasizing about how amazing it would be to work on a National Park.



Our driver slows down and brings us to an area where tons of crocodiles are known to hang out. He tells us all to be very quiet. Sure enough, they are there, lots of them, slithering along on the ground and slipping gracefully into water. Wow.


The water around us is covered in foam - we are getting close to the falls. We'll see them from the water today, and tomorrow we'll hike up to the top on land. We stop the boat at some large rocks, where everyone gets out and climbs on top to take photos.





Before we know it, we are at the turn-around point and we spend the entire journey back to land pointing out wildlife to each other, snapping more photos, updating our animal tally sheet, not believing we are here.

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