Dec 14-15: Work Hard, Play Hard!

Here at Ekyaalo Diagnostics, we live out the saying "work hard, play hard"!

With 5/6 team members never having been to Africa before, we had no option but to spend one of our weekends here on a classic Ugandan safari. We had the most incredible time, took some iconic photos, and made memories that will last us a lifetime.

Saturday, December 14th

We drove ~3 hours to Queen Elizabeth National Park, and stopped at another equator point along the way. Did you know that water rotates counter clockwise in the southern hemisphere, clockwise in the northern hemisphere, and doesn't rotate at all right at the equator line, where these forces equal out? We didn't either!

Rotational force experiment @ the equator!

After our drive, we arrived at our lodge, with a beautiful outlook area where we could see far into the safari landscape. We had a delicious lunch before taking our first game drive to get to the boat. We immediately saw a herd of elephants, and continued to see so many elephants throughout the weekend. The park we were at had approximately 4,000 elephants in total - we can indeed confirm, their presence was like that of squirrels in a neighborhood park!

On our first game ride, we saw many baboons! Baboons are primates that belong to the monkey family that has a red bottom in females. This is the characteristic feature of baboon called ischial callosity which is a thickened piece of skin found on their buttocks. It is a display of sexual readiness.

After about an hour, we arrived on Lake Edward for our boat ride. This boat ride was arguably the best part of the trip. We got an up-close look at hippos, elephants, crocodiles, water bucks, water buffalo, and more. The tour guide taught us so much about each species herding, breeding, living, and eating patterns. Additionally, we learned about the fishermen that are stationed in communities along the lake, who have learned how to live safely with the wild animals. We felt like safari experts after this educational and beautiful boat ride!

After the boat ride, we went on another game drive in a different area of the park, where we saw more of all the previous animals. And, we saw our first lions off in the distance. By "saw", we mean that we watched them mate! We rode until sunset, and enjoyed the peaceful nature... that is, until we got a rain shower (literally, we thought it was rain) of gnats.

We enjoyed another fantastic meal at the lodge and went to bed in preparation of our sunrise game drive the following morning. Ava and Shreya shared their room with some local friends - a family of bats :)

Sunday, December 15th

We hit the road at 6:30am to enjoy the sunrise and catch the final hours of some of the nocturnal animals. Early in our ride, we found 3 lions - 1 enjoying a hearty buffalo breakfast from their previous night's hunting catch, and 2 taking a food-coma nap. There are only ~60 lions in the entire park, so our guide told us we were extremely fortunate to see 3 of them, especially right near the edge of the road.

We stationed on the side of the road for quite a while, watching them move around a bit and capturing some amazing photos. Then, we moved on and continued driving around the park, and we saw more antelope and kobs than ever before. And, of course - more elephants.

As we were finishing our game drive and leaving the park, we returned to where we had found the lions a few hours prior. We arrived to find them cuddled up in the shade, underneath the car in front of us! It seems that they're pretty comfortable with humans in the park, or at least, appeared to be. The drivers of the car said they had been sitting there with the lions under their car for 2 hours. We didn't want the lions to move to our car and get stuck under there, so we decided that was our moment to leave the park.

On our drive home to Mbarara, we stopped at a tea plantation and learned the process of harvesting tea leaves.

Upon our return to Mbarara, we rested & prepared for our final week of work in Uganda. We were so grateful to have had this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Bucket list item: check!

Our Main Takeaways:

• Always have your binoculars ready

• Don't roll down the window when a baboon is approaching

• Just because you think something is rain, doesn't mean it is

• Just because there are also buffalo and antelopes in Colorado, doesn't mean they're not cool to see on an African safari

• Don't offer lions shade

• When they say don't leave your cabin unescorted, there's a good reason

• Check your room for bats before your turn the lights off to go to bed

• Take the once-in-a-lifetime experience when it comes your way, even if it means you'll have to catch up on work later!

Serial explorers!