Our friend Marissa arrived in Entebbe later the same night as us. She's joining us for the Uganda part of our trip, to see the gorillas and all the other animals.
Breakfast at the Karibu Guest House was pretty good. At first we thought we had a choice of fruit salad and pancakes, or an English breakfast, but it turned out that it was a listing of the courses - it was a big breakfast.
We took a taxi to the airport for our charter Aerolink flight to Kidepo at 12:30pm. We arrived just before 11am, and the lady at the Aerolink counter asked us to wait as she had to announce that the counter was open for check-in. So she made the announcement and then checked us in. It turned out we were the only three passengers on the flight; but I guess she had to follow procedure. The whole rest of the process was the same, with everything announced over the PA before she did anything. We half-expected her to open boarding to business class passengers first.
So Marissa, Heather and I boarded the 11-seater single prop Cessna. The pilot made the safety announcements over his shoulder from the cockpit; and then we were off.
The 90-minute flight was pretty smooth. The fields below gave way to unfenced national parkland, and then the airstrip was visible. We signed the guest registration book at the airport and then boarded the safari vehicle that came to pick us up. The pilots joined us - there are no other passengers until we leave, so they're staying at the lodge until then.
We saw a lot of animals on the five minute drive to Apoka Safari Lodge - zebras, waterbucks, warthogs. Apoka is the only lodge in Kidepo National Park, and we were the only guests at the lodge - an entire national park to ourselves!
Apoka was ranked by CNN as the 2nd best safari lodge in the world - it's very nice. We had a lemon and ginger drink on arrival which helped to calm stomachs upset from the flight. Then we were shown our rooms - they blend right into the landscape and have screens but no glass windows - so you feel like you're sleeping out in the savannah.
We had a high tea and then were off for our first game drive. It's amazing that 36 hours after leaving Toronto, Marissa was on a game drive. We saw dozens of zebras, waterbucks and Cape buffalo up close, and some elephants off in the distance. The drivers are allowed to off-road so you can get the right lighting for pictures. At 6pm we stopped in the middle of the savannah for the "sundowner" - a drink while we watched the sunset. They make a big deal at the lodge about having your favourite drink for sundowner, but we all went with a local pilsener, Club, which was great. A Rotchschild giraffe wandered by as the sunset. It was an excellent day, one of Heather's favourite vacation days yet.
We drove back to the lodge and cleaned up before dinner, for which we had selected our menu options prior to the game drive. Dinner was great, served in the open air main hall overlooking the savannah. Surprisingly there were no bugs either.
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