Another 6am departure to start the day, we collected up the other sixteen people who were joining our group and had a sausage based breakfast before I curled up on the truck, using my beanbag tripod for a pillow for an extra couple of hours sleep to get over the Safari induced hangover from the night before….

A little later in the day, we were stopping for supplies at a mall, and I was able to indulge my addiction with a rather excellent Latte.

We resumed our drive for quite a few more hours before we stopped for lunch and to show the newbies what to do.

As we drove further and further down toto Uganda, all my digital gadgets to keep me entertained slowly started running out of charge…

We reached the Simba campsite at 5pm and setup, a much larger task now that we had so many more people, but I managed to keep a tent to myself, which was a real luxury as they were only just two man sized.

After dinner, I need out to the car park, with is big empty sky to do some astrophotography.

It had been quite some time since I’d last done any shots of the starts, almost exactly a year in fact during my last trip: A Tog’s Travels: Trekking in Nepal. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten much of what I’d learned.

Stars move! It is always a surprise to me. I know it intellectually, but the fact that it can easily be detected with an exposure of a couple of minutes is remarkable. It means, with a normal camera, you have to start looking at a high ISO to capture nice bright stars.

Yet again we were up at 5am, but this time with the bonus that we did not need to strike our tents because we would be staying another night.

We piled into the truck and headed out, stopping briefly at the equator, marked simply by two stone circles.

Elizabeth Equator Memorial

The equator cuts through Uganda. Near Jinja there is a visitors centre with food, souvenirs and people showing off the corollas effect.

Queen Elizabeth National Park

We then drove into the park and started our second nature drive.

The park itself was less full of wildlife than Lake Nakuru (or so it seemed to us) but we did manage to see the fourth of the big five; Elephants!

As well as seeing a couple of hyenas trotting past before they decided to take a nap.

After the boat finished up, we drove back to the campsite, and we saw a few more animals on the route, though I was stuck with my G11 as my main camera was being charged by Van’s charger to prepare for the following day.

Back at camp, after a sublime pumpkin soup, I retired to the candlelit bar to journal and catch up with the gang!

Simba Safari Camp

Canoe Ride

After lunch, we walked down the road and almost all of us took a Boat Ride around the lake. We’d been advised to get there early and to sit on the left side of the boat. It was quite amazing, we saw swarms of Hippos, dozens of birds, three elephants in strange shades due to the different mud they’d used to dry off, as well as crocodiles and water buffalo.