Holiday Hootnany Part 2

So my cousin thinks my blog ended much too abruptly yesterday... which means I'd best do some writing tonight and try to find a good resolution to the hootnany...

Following our drive to almost the Congo [I just can't say that word without thinking about that Raffi song that we used to sing along to ... "nothing can go wrong-o, I'm in the Congo..."], we spent a bit of time in the pool with the kids.  The pool there is fantastic - a lovely "adult" pool which overlooks the savannah far below, plus a little kid's pool with a slide!  You can guess where we spent most of our time, with two wee ones with us!

Yup, good fun was had by all.  Best part about it was that there were hardly any other people around!  Seriously, not another soul in either of the pools the entire time we were there.  It was almost like having a private lodge all to ourselves (until dinner time came and then all the Germans with interesting haircuts came out of the woodwork from somewhere...)

Anyway, in the evening, we ate our dinner outside while watching the sun set.  The wee ones got steins full of milk that were bigger than their heads.  Considering we sorta skipped lunch again that day, though, it wasn't such a bad thing :)

All the while, we were rooting through Grace's Brandt Guide to Uganda, to try to figure out what to do the following day.  We decided that we would not get up quite so early, and try to take a little meander through the forest to see what we could see.

Driving down the "4WD Only" road in our Corona, we saw a few more creatures, but of course, still no lions!

We were headed to a particular forest part of the National Park called Maramagambo Forest (had to look up the spelling of that place on the internet just now!).  Of course, by the time we got there, the "guide" had just gone somewhere.  And the remaining "guide" was loathe to let us wander through the forest on our own!  So we decided to keep driving up the road a bit to a place called Jacana Safari Lodge, just to see what we could see while we waited for the guide to come back from wherever he had gone to.

The Lodge turned out to be a lovely place, on the shores of a lake.  It would be a very nice and relaxing place to hang out for a few days for a quiet holiday, tucked away in the middle of the forest for a while!  Of course, we had the Tourist...

... the Cowgirl...

... and the Wee Ones...

... plus, of course... ME... but they still gave us a little tour of the Lodge and even let us crash on the pool side loungers for a little while!

Seriously, you don't get nice-ness like this in Jb, folks!
After a while, we figured that perhaps it would be a good time to take our leave of the posh-ness, so we headed back to the forest headquarters place to see if the guide had returned yet.  Just our luck, he had!  But as soon as the Wee Ones (and I think the not so wee ones!) jumped out of the car, the guide took one look at us and quite firmly told us that he was doubting that we could make it very far up the trail.

We assured him that even though three of us [who shall remain nameless] were wearing plastic shoes and had legs that were shorter than his gun, we still wanted to try to meander down the path!

So we paid our fees, the guide slung his gun over his shoulder (for protection, I guess?!) and off we hiked into the forest.

At which point, I also became a Tourist.  Have I mentioned how much I like my hat?

While we didn't see many creatures crashing through the forest (though we were a lot quieter than I originally thought we might be!), it was so wonderful to just be walking through a forest!  It was incredibly beautiful and I just enjoyed seeing all the trees and plants and various creepy crawly which inhabit that forest and crater lake!

The kids did amazingly well, even in their plastic shoes!  I think one or two of the big people in our group were not complaining when Frankie sat down to have a drink and a breather!

We walked around the big crater lake there, but then walked back a little ways down the road and through the forest to...                                                                                              Stay tuned for me!