Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary

Today's Uganthem... Cleverly chosen because we had to 'follow' the Rhinos around.

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Nobody ever regretted waking up early.

This is something that I try to live by, now. If you're tired you can go back to sleep. If you wake up late, you can't go back to 6am.

Waking up early today was justified by the incredible sights we saw as the sun rose. We were driving parallel to the East African Rift Valley and this early in the morning it was brimming with fog and mist. Seeing the earth just drop away so rapidly from the side of the road and the whole thing being swamped with fog was amazing. Add on top of that another disgustingly beautiful sunrise and you've got yourself a recipe for a cool road trip.

Mohammed - the person we had organised to drive us to Murchison National Park and the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary - picked us up at 6;45 and we made tracks very promptly. We got to the gates of the sanctuary at 7;27am and they open at 7;30 so we were happy (see, no one ever regretted waking up early). We rushed inside, paid and started the walk out to find some Rhinos.

We stumbled upon a family of them and our guide, Edward, relayed multiple facts about their lives:

They only charge you if you stand in front of them
They eat 300 Kgs of vegetation a day
If the grass is too long then they can't eat it
The Chinese hunt them for their horns to be used as ornaments and also in herbal viagra

The whole experience was very surreal, and I really enjoyed it, but it felt slightly hollow. Rangers in the sanctuary track the rhinos 24/7 (so anyone you know who helped 'track rhinos in Uganda for 6 months of the year' probably just followed a lot of slow-moving rhinos around a field for 12 hours a day) which means your chances of seeing them are 100% guaranteed and there's very little thrill of the chase. Your guide knows where they are and he takes you to them. It isn't as rewarding as driving through a Game Park and stumbling across some animals by chance. I still whole heartedly recommend going to the sanctuary especially if you can see baby Obama (mother was a rhino from Kenya, father was from the U.S..... Genius name!).

Interesting side note - these are white rhinos but, as you can see, they are in fact grey. This was down to a misunderstanding between dutch explorers and Ugandan locals. They were originally called 'Wide Rhinos' as their mouths are very square and wide, but something got lost in translation.

Afterward Mohammed dropped us at a junction in the road where a Link bus (think National-Express-if-it-was-run-by-Primark equivalent) was supposed to be picking us up. It didn't turn up. Obviously. Instead we hung out with some boda drivers talking and chilling and then eventually quit our waiting and jumped in the next Matatu (a small Bedford-style van with 14 seats in it, designed to hold at least 43,000 people) to Kampala. Much faster, easier and cheaper. I felt bad for Axel as he was sat next to a lady who spent a good few hours filling up a small bucket with her vomit and periodically hurling it out of the window before repeating the whole process. A small, hot, bumpy bus ride with a faint aroma of sick in the air.... Lovely.

In Kampala we eventually made our way to the hostel where we were staying after a bad taxi ride and a lucky coincidence. The hostel was sick. Brand new, just 4 days old! We grabbed some beers, some ices and hung out on the pool table all evening just relaxing properly for the first time in 4 weeks. It felt good.

The food at the hostel was incredible*. This was very important.

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The rhino sanctuary. I took a lot of photos of the rhinos and picking one was difficult. Then I had to decide if I even wanted to upload a picture of a rhino as there a billion better ones online that you could all look at instead. I had a couple of us hanging out at the rhino sanctuary and seeing as the people you're with is more important the places you go, it was a really tough decision to pick this one.

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*The food may not have actually been incredible, but given that the bar had been previously set incredibly low for the previous 4 weeks we all agreed that it was ridiculously good. I had a salad. A SALAD!!!!!