roaming.kiwi

I did some research on the Nile River. It is the longest river in the world, (6,695 km) and goes through 10 countries. It ends up in Egypt, in the Mediterranean Sea. It comes from the White Nile, which is made up of the Victoria Nile, the Albert Nile and the Mountain Nile. Also the Blue Nile, which starts in Ethiopia. The Blue Nile and the White Nile meet in Sudan. Even though the White Nile is bigger, it loses more water and is only 15% of the water that gets to Egypt. The Nile is important to Egypt because it carries minerals from the mountains and makes the soil good for the Egyptians to grow their crops.

The next day we got up and went on a game drive. We had to take a ferry, that only held 8 cars. We crossed the Nile River and drove to the delta where the Victoria Nile goes into Lake Albert and the Albert Nile starts. We saw lots of animals, especially giraffes. Some of the giraffes were very dark in colour. We also saw lots of elephants and buffalo. And lots and lots of different antelope. We also saw some lions but some naughty tourists went off the road, close to the lions and scared them away. They got fined for being naughty.  This park is different to other parks as we didn’t see any zebra or wildebeest.

Then we crossed the border to Uganda. It was a pretty good border. We drove to Nile River Camp. We could see over the Victoria Nile. We met two families from Portugal and played football and went swimming with them. We saw monkeys with red tails. Mummy cut my hair shorter, and she cut Daddy’s hair and Genevieve got a fringe! On the last night, when we were asleep, a branch from a palm tree fell on our tent. It gave us all a big fright!

After Nile River Camp we drove to Ziwa Rhino Camp. We went on a rhino trek, with a guide called Ronald, but he told us to call him ‘Rhino’. We drove through a bit of mud then parked the car and walked the rest of the way. Some of the grass was over my head. We saw a Mummy and a 2 month old rhino, but they were sitting down. Then we walked and saw 3 rhinos. A mum and her baby and a male rhino. The baby was 1.5 years old and really big!

On the way back to the car, we walked past the mummy and 2 month old rhino again. It started to rain and the little rhino got very excited. It started to follow us, and also the mummy. Our guide told us to either climb a tree or hide behind a thicket. Rhino’s can’t see very well, but they can hear and smell. I was a bit scared, not of the baby, but of the big horned Mummy!

Rhinos are either black or white. They only have white rhinos here. Even though they are all grey, white rhinos are called white because of their wide mouth. It was a mis-pronounciation of wide to white. They just eat grass. Black rhinos are more aggresive and they eat leaves. A male rhino can weigh up to 3.5 tonnes, that is the same as the Taniwha. They can run 45km per hour, that is a lot faster than me. Rhinos get poached just for their horns. I think that is very mean.

We camped in a fenced off area. The next morning I woke up and 5 rhinos were sleeping right outside the gate!!!!! The rhinos itched their horns on the fence! We saw them eating, and pooing, and they did a lot of noisy farts! We had to wait for them to move, before we could leave.

Rhinos are very rare, so it was amazing that we saw 10 of them!!

We also saw:

• Big tusky Elephants
• Hyena in a den
• Pelicans
• Secretary Bird
• Spoonbills
• 2 big Lions
• Crested Cranes
• Lots of Zebra and Wildebeest
• Hippos
• Warthog
• 3 Giraffes
• Lots of dust devils
• A Jackal
• Big fat Cape Buffalo
• Babboons and Vervet Monkeys

Daddy also helped a family who had burst 2 tyres. He plugged the hole and we filled their tyre with air, then went back to the lodge with them, to make sure they got there ok. We camped in the park and that night we saw Mt Kilimanjaro! (When we drove round it, it was covered in clouds)

Then we went back to Jungle Junction in Nairobi.