Mukerenge

After yesterday's detour and an additional 5 or so hours of travel, we had to make up for lost time and complete our walking Rhino tour in the morning. Given that there were a number of baby rhinos in the sanctuary, I was slightly worried that we may get too close and spur up the Rhino to react. Nonetheless, I had to trust the guide and rangers to keep us safe. In the end, it was a great experience to walk around the National Park and get within a few metres of the rhinos without any protection. Although we have completed a lot of game drives, the variety of experiences, animals, and landscapes means that you really don't get sick of them, and this activity reflected that. The guide was great. He knew each Rhino, their habits, and how to keep us safe. Whenever a Rhino would inch towards us, or when they made their warning sound, we would calmly back away to a safe distance to remove any sort of perception of threat to the baby rhinos. In total, we saw probably 10 rhinos in a couple of hours of walking, which seemed like quite a successful day. Overall, we spent more time observing, admiring, and asking questions to the guide about Rhino behaviour rather than actual walking. But it was cool and very interesting. After this, though, it was time to catch up on missed sports while we repeated the drive back to Kempala. We started by trying to watch the rugby union, but the connection was shit and we had to let it load for a very long time before we could continue. This plus the many breaks we took meant that it took us a good 4 hours to watch the whole game. A frustrating and annoying process that was only made worse when we had to watch New Zealand lose, after some horrible refereeing in the first half and 2 missed conversions / penalty kicks toward the end of the game. The kiwis in the group were devastated. To make things worse again, we still had a long drive to get to the new campsite. Luckily, I had also missed the F1, so I watched that, as well as finishing off watching the boxing. As the trip was beginning to round out, the premier league had started, and reception improved enough that I could watch Chelsea lose to Brentford, a small win in an otherwise bad day of sports. Then, as we arrived, a big rivalry game in the Eredivisie (Dutch football league) had begun. Ajax vs. PSV. One of the girls from the tour is a big PSV fan, so we made sure we watched it by the pool as we waited for dinner. They also had beach volleyball, so a few of us geared up for a game. In the end, Nick and I somehow let ourselves lose to the girls, but we have areas to improve, and we will get them next time. After this, we ate and watched the final premier league game of the day, Manchester United vs. Manchester City. This was a reasonably good game, and it ended exactly how I expected it to, a thumping for Manchester United. 3-0, the final score. It was basically a day of sport to try and kill time while we waste away on the bus. This was pretty much the end of the day, and we headed to bed to get ready for another big day or driving to get to Lake Mboru National Park.Read more