V&A

Thursday, 19th August, Semliki Time: 4:26pm

Lake Albert, second only to lake Victoria, is the second biggest body of water in Uganda. It's famous not only for its size but also for its animal life and earlier Alex, David, Holly and I headed out with the owners of the Semliki Safari Lodge for an Albertan adventure. One species, in particular, had piqued our interests and this was the rare and elusive Shoebill – an unusual, almost prehistoric bird with a beak resembling, unsurprisingly, a shoe!

At 9am sharp, after a tremendous lie-in, we all jumped into the Semliki Lodge’s whopping tank of a Safari Jeep and headed out into the open savannah. Though we’d travelled the same track time and time again, being a meter above the grass changed the vista substantially. Where before, all I could see were the odd tops of trees, the whole grassland unfolded in front of us like a sheet. Water buck and kob jumped around, and families of warthog shaded themselves underneath thorny acacia trees. Soon enough we reached the golden red main road and, after half an hour or so, we pulled up in a village on the shores of Lake Albert. While I’ve become used to children in foreign countries yelling “Hello, how are you”, the Albertian kids yelled with such verve and gusto that it was almost impossible to keep a straight face. Millions of tiny, chubby, partially clad toddlers relentlessly pursued us down the road screaming their greatings repeatedly till all that could be heard was a yodelling whoop of “Owayowayowayou?!”. By the end I felt like a practical messiah, leading my followers to the promised land. Sadly, we were going a little too fast for their young legs and the faithful were periodically left behind in the dust.

Lake Albert more closely resembles a sea than a lake and the far bank is significantly further away than Dover is from Calais. The Lodge’s small boat was parked next to a bunch of thirty-somethings gutting fish and I waved my camera at them questioning whether I could take a photo. The answer was a negative and one particularly obstreperous fellow started screaming blue murder. After I had backed away and turned the camera off, he gestured that he wanted some money in return for the favour. I snapped a rather kinder man gutting fish on another bank – photos are a free market.

After no sooner than 15 minutes of chugging along in the smooth, greenish waters of the lake, a majestically ugly black shape hove into view, perched on a patch of water hibiscus. This was the shoebill in person, and it glowered at us over its bizarre beak. Up in the sky, kingfishers swooped, dug-out fishing boats glided past, and we sat and stared at the shoebill for almost an hour. The shoebill, not at all non-plussed by the attention, stood its ground and scanned the water for fish. After a very long time, it struck and proudly retrieved a plastic bottle. After some confused gnawing, it gave up and stalked around for some more forgiving prey.

The rest of the day was spent floating, fishing and drinking beer in the middle of the lake. Nothing else particularly eventful happened, but it was all very pleasant indeed. After a long while of fruitless fishing, we all headed back and jumped into the safari jeep for the drive home. The day was not yet finished though and, just as we’d arrived in the park, Alex gave a cry of “ELEPHANT!”. I started. David and Holly started. The Elephant gazed over curiously. As soon as Keith, who was driving, heard that there was an elephant, he rocketed the safari car forward into the long grass. The thing was more robust than a tank and chugged through the long grass with ease. It wasn’t long before we were just a hair's distance from the Elephant, and the sight was amazing.

As the solar generator has gone awry and I don’t know how I’m going to ration the rest of the battery, I will stop writing there. If there are no blogs for a while, this is the reason! Suffice it to say, I had an incredible day and have truly “seen Africa”, if that means anything at all!