We woke up early and a cup of coffee fueled us for the morning safari drive, where we opened up our Land Cruiser top and to spot animals. Our drive started at 0630 and we returned around 1000. We actually ended up seeing more variety the night before, but here’s what we found that morning:
We then settled back in for breakfast and a nap. We found some amazing creatures to keep us company over our delicious breakfast (little yellow birds).
After, we were transported to the hotel’s dock at 1400 for a boat cruise for more wildlife spotting. The cruise took 2 hours and slowly floated down the Kasinga channel towards Lake George. The channel was rich with animal and bird life – we saw at least 10 different types of birds, elephant herds, a forest boar, buffalo, hippos, alligators, and a monitor lizard.
We came back from the boat ride at 1630 and Robert suggested we go on a special “research” experience to find the lions that we had to date missed out on. The lion experience was $50 per person, and was arranged through the National Park office. We had an armed escort and a tracker with an antenna to locate collared lions (not all lions were collared). We were told that these experiences were part of research activities, but no researcher came with us and it was 100% pure tourism. However, I highly recommend you do this because you are practically guaranteed to be within 30 feet of a lion.
We got to see a lone female, and observed her for about 15 minutes as she cleaned herself and rolled around in the tall grass. Her name was Lina.
Then we moved on to find another female – but to our surprise the tracked took us to a female that wasn’t collared. Therefore we deduced that the collared one must be nearby. The uncollared female eventually led us to the lion pride, which included the collared female – the “big mama” (grandmother) – and several cubs. 6 in total.
After observing them for about 30 minutes, through several views and approaches, we rolled off as sunset began, extremely satisfied with what we saw that day.
A huge bbq dinner awaited us at the hotel around 2030 when we finally made it back and showered. A Kenyan Tusker beer was the perfect, well-earned night-cap as we enjoyed our food.