THE WHITE NILE: I feel like Teddy Roosevelt at times...

...even though I don't shoot at wild animals from a couch fixed to the front of a moving train.

I'm not sure what this interesting little bird is called, but would love it if someone could tell me!

Despite how it may look, that is NOT my little sister drinking a beer in front of the Nile River after a full day of world class white water rafting

Terrace farming just visible in the early hours of the morning, Lake Bunyonyi, Southwest Uganda

The lake has hundreds of islands, some inhabited, some filled with muzungu travelers like my sister and me, but others have more interesting histories, including Punishment Island, a single-tree mound in one of the most remote parts of the lake where villagers used to bring women who had been impregnated out of wedlock to fend for themselves in the cold waters. The girls we were traveling with somehow found their way back to the boat.

Some canoeists paddle across the lake at dusk towards home after a full day of fishing for tilapia and, the specialty of the area, the Bunyonyi crayfish.

The second animal Hayley and I saw at Kidepo Wildlife Preserve was Bull Bull, an aging African bull elephant that has acquired an affinity for marwa, the local beer made from millet that is popular with the locals. (WAS popular, I should say. Apparently Bull Bull, if he picks up the scent, will stop at nothing to get his trunk on some marwa, even if it means breaking down the doors in the staff quarters.)

Hayley and I went exploring around the campsite we stayed at, first walking to this beautiful sunken area which centered around the dregs of a rapidly-shrinking water hole, and then onto the dry wadi of the Narus River, where we strolled, toes in the soft sand, until we stumbled across some fresh looking lion prints moving in the same direction and decided it was time to head home for lunch.

I could try and use some fancy words like "juxtaposition" and "reclamation" to describe this photo, but I'd only embarrass myself. How's this: Rift Valley peaks line the perimeter of Kidepo, extending through Kenya into Sudan, then back down to complete the enclosure in Uganda.

The third animal we saw was, like the second, a medium-sized, ageing bull elephant. This one was not friendly however, and began to charge the pickup truck which we were standing on. Luckily for you, the reader, that my first inclination when I hear the guide frantically yelling directions to the driver because a full grown African behemoth has just started to charge, is to take a picture.

Abyssinian Roller, one of my favorite birds ever.

I forgot what this animal was called. The mountains in the background lie in Kenya.

A duo of lions in heat, too exhausted from all of the action to do anything more than lazily watch our vehicle creep by

What do you call a female elephant? Bullina? One of those things I should probably know after living in Africa for five months

Our final day in Kidepo, Hayley and I shelled out more shillings that we ought to have, and went swimming in the greatest pool ever. All one had to do is float over to the pool's edge, peak over the retaining wall, and catch a glimpse of waterbucks, zebras, wildebeest, or even a family of warthogs playing in the mud.