Blessings 365: Day 245: Safari?

Why would I have safari with a ? as my blessing title?  Well, honestly, because I'm thinking the safari was an ugly-beautiful blessing.  It had some ugly and some beautiful.

We traded cars with our friends and headed off on a Sunday morning in early September for a fun safari.  First of all, it was rainy and cold the whole way there (a 3 hour drive on fun Ugandan roads).  We got to the park entrance and the rain let up and we started off through the park.

We saw lots of fun gazelle-looking things, cape buffalo, and wart hogs.  Several of the kids climbed up on the roof rack to get a great view....but they had to come down after a while because their lips were literally turning purple from the cold.  

cape buffalo

We were all in the car driving along when all of a sudden Melissa said (quietly at first, but then louder and louder), "elephants....Elephants...ELEPHANTS, ELEPHANTS, ELEPHANTS!!"  Scott quickly backed the car up and sure enough, there off the road in a clump of trees were 2 HUGE African elephants ripping leaves off the tops of the trees with their powerful trunks.  It was so cool!!

A little after this we stopped for lunch.  We decided to splurge a bit and bought lunch at one of the lodges.  Later we were SO glad we did!!  The lunch was delicious and the view was gorgeous!  During lunch the staff told us that there had been many lion sightings around the lodge that morning.  Apparently the lions like to be out in the coolness after a good rain.  hmmm....remember that little fact for later in this post!

At lunch, with the Nile in the background

After lunch we started out again.  Benji, Laura, Nate and Garrett were on the roof rack.  As Scott began to round a corner he suddenly said, "Elephant, 12 o'clock."  And sure enough there standing right in the middle of the road was the biggest bull elephant I've ever seen.  It looked right at our car and flared its ears.  Now remember, 4 of my kids are on the roof.  panic!  Scott slowly put the car in reverse until we were out of the elephant's line of sight.  Then we quickly put the car in park and got our kids DOWN super fast!!  By that time the elephant had started to lumber off into the woods and we all had a good laugh!

We began to see giraffe.  My favorite!!  They are so majestic and beautiful!!  The day was getting better and better!

Then we came to a fork in the road.  Which way should we go?  One was was wide and looked well traveled.  It looked smooth and good!  The other way was full of crevices and pot holes.  We chose the wide road.  We chose poorly.

This picture was taken right before the fork in the road.

At this point Benji was back on the roof of the car looking for more giraffe and elephants (and, of course, he was dying to see a lion!). Suddenly the road got really muddy and mushy.  The car began sliding slowly to the right on the road.  There was nothing we could do to stop it.  I began to pray for Benji.  We came to a stop and Benji climbed down.  We began to work at getting the car unstuck...trying to engage the 4 wheel drive, pushing, etc.  But nothing worked.  We kept sinking lower and lower in the mud.  It was 1:00 pm.

This sort of gives you an idea of how "stuck" we were.  The UWA guys said it was the worst they've ever had someone stuck.  Thanks...an honor we could have lived our whole lives without!!  After we were out we joked that we should have Annie stand in the rut we left, so people could get a realistic idea of how far down in the mud our tires were.

As Scott began working to free our tires, he had Benji climb back up on top of the car....remember all those lion sightings from earlier in the day??  Scott did NOT want to be surprised by a lion attack (and that seemed the direction this day was heading!)  Everything we did just caused our tires to get sunk deeper and deeper into the mud.

With the little cell phone service we had, we called our friends, the Becks.  Denise immediately started trying to find someone who could pull us out.  Josh went and got airtime for our phones.  Our friend Jenna found the number for the lodge we had just left.  Scott called them and was told that without 200 American dollars they wouldn't even come to us.  We don't carry American money anymore...we live in Uganda!  ugh!  That was no help!!

posing for a picture...I'm in the car concentrating on finding a number to call for help before my cell phone died!

One blessing to add at this point is the fact that I had my MTN cell phone.  I have 2 phones and the MTN phone is used mostly as a flashlight.  Since we were getting ready to leave in the dark that morning (power was out in Gulu), I was using my MTN phone and "accidentally" stuck it in my pocket.  Without it, we would have terrible phone service or NO phone service!!  Thank you, Jesus!

Denise called with the number for the UWA (Uganda Wildlife Authority).  We described where we were and they said they were "on their way."  Here in Uganda that means "we're finishing tea, getting fuel for the car, maybe even washing it and THEN we're leaving."  At this point we had been stuck for about 3 hours.  The only consolation was a family of giraffe on a hill about a half kilometer away.  They were fun to watch for the first 30 minutes.  haha

The family of giraffe on the next hill.

Finally about 4 hours into this adventure, the UWA showed up.  They tried to pull us out, but failed.  In fact, we got stuck worse than before.  They had to go get another "something" to try to pull us out.  After that didn't work, they called a truck with a crane.
  

The guys from UWA trying to decide what to do.

About an hour later it finally showed up and ALMOST got stuck pulling us out.  But it pulled us out!!  The kids and I were a little way up the hill praying out loud, shouting and praising Jesus.  At this point it was 6:58 pm and the park closed at 7.  You're doing your math right...we were stuck for 6 hours!

Yep, that's the setting sun reflecting in our window.  And there's me standing with the kids praying that Jesus would get us out before the sun went down!

We got special permission to leave the park and we headed towards the entrance as fast as we could drive.  On the way we DID see a pair of hyenas.  We've talked to many people who say they've never heard of anyone seeing hyenas in the park...so that's pretty cool.

We reached the park entrance about 30 minutes later...and still had a 3 hour drive home.  in the dark.   on Ugandan roads.  and the hits just keep on coming!  Praise the Lord we made is safely home at 11:30 pm.  

So that's the good, bad and the ugly of our safari.  I'm sure one day we'll look back and laugh at the whole thing....but we're not there quite yet.  We just think happy thoughts about elephants and giraffe and don't speak too much about the rest!!

Thanks to Melissa and Scott for the awesome pictures!