We definitely did not expect the lodge photography would go so well. But here we are: on our way to our third client with an unexpected trip to Queen Elizabeth National Park.
The owner of Aardvark Safari Lodge on the edge of Queen Elizabeth National Park, Bob, is a friend of Tim, the owner of Zebra Safari Lodge in Kidepo. After hearing about us from Tim he had gotten very excited about what we do. We planned to skip Queen Elizabeth National Park, but Bob was very enthusiastic. After some negotiations we agreed on an arrangement.
From Bwindi, we used one stopover at Ntungamo, were we spent 2 nights. The time here we spent with some editing and relaxing. We are still terrible at relaxing and not feeling bad about it. After a day of doing nothing, we feel useless, inactive and lazy. Still some work to do in allowing ourselves this time.
The drive to Queen Elizabeth National Park was relatively easy, but it was with some nasty speedbumps. Jeroen is not the best in slowing down and speeding up again, and Mai was making overtime in registering 'accident events'. After number 5 (or 6?) he stopped and let Emma finish the ride.
Before we arrived at Aardvark Safari Lodge, we received the expectations Bob had of our photos and videos. Perfect, now we knew exactly what to focus on and for the rest we were able to use our own creativity. The lodge has a beautiful two floor lounge and restaurant area. The rooms are enormous and the staff was very friendly. They did their absolute best to treat us well and to help in getting the best shots. In the afternoon of our arrival, we met with Bob and talked a bit about him, ourselves and the lodge. The next few days we spent photographing and videographing the lodge and editing all our footage. The lodge is known to be visited by elephants on a regular basis, so were hoping to get this on camera. We were in luck. An enormous bull visited us, and gave a great show
One of the days, we went on a game drive in Queen Elizabeth National Park. Unfortunately, this was a bit of a disappointment. We know we are spoilt with the parks we have enjoyed in Kenya and with some of the guides we have had in the past years. We love seeing all wildlife, and nowadays especially birds, and learning more about them, but we forgot to instruct the ranger and driver about this. They were set on showing us the lions of the park. We wanted to stop for birds and other animals a few times, but unfortunately the driver kept driving too far, scaring most of the animals away or putting us in positions unfavorable for photos and videos. We did manage to get some shots of the lions for the lodge, but other than that, we did not see much.
On the way back, we stopped for a boat ride on the Kazinga channel. The guide on the boat ride loved birds just as much as Emma, so this was much nicer than anticipated. We saw many, many beautiful birds, hippos, buffaloes, crocodiles and some Nile monitor lizards. We even saw a Nile monitor lizard enter a weaver nest in search for eggs. As the weavers kept attacking the monitor lizard, which was way too big for them, we watched in awe. What an amazing experience.
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