Sunday 10th December

What a fantastic morning! We went to the giraffe sanctuary and I fed 2 adult and 2 baby Rothschild giraffes. Then when they asked for volunteers to kiss them I was first in line. You take one of the pellets that they love so much, put it between your lips and they take it gently from you. Just lovely.

Giraffes have the largest heart of all land mammals at 10kilos and it can pump 9 litres of blood per minute. At one point there were only 130 of this type of giraffe left in the wild. The sanctuary opened in 1979 and there are now 350 Rothschild giraffes in the wild. Males can grow to 6metres, females 5.5m. They weigh around 3,000lbs and are born with horns which the males use for fighting.

They have amazing eyesight and can see up to 3km away. Their tongue is 45cm long and it has antiseptic saliva to kill the poison in some of the leaves they eat and to help heal their tongues from all the thorns they eat.

Their gestation period is 15months but if they want to delay the baby being born, for example if there isn't a lot of food around, they can do this for up to 3 months, completely stopping the growth of the baby. Unbelievable! The mother gives birth standing up and it's a long drop to the ground for the baby!

They live for around 30 years in captivity but only around 10-15 years in the wild. If you've ever seen a giraffe run they look like they are going in slow motion but don't be deceived - they are extremely fast and can run up to 56km per hour.

They have a 1 tonne impact kick so have very few natural predators. They eat up to 65kg of food per day and they sleep standing or sitting for around 25-35 minutes per day.

The centre runs a programme to educate children from poorer areas about the importance of conservation for the future. There is a lodge on the grounds which was beautiful and you can stay there and feed them at breakfast and dinner from your room balcony or the porch area.

After having my giraffe fix for the day, we headed off to the elephant orphanage so Kate could get her fix.

They brought out 4 really small babies which were around 4 months old and 7 older ones that were around 8 months old. They were very cute and all have clear personalities.

The taxi ride back to the campsite was hilarious - our driver was clearly drunk and had fallen alseep while waiting for us - we had to try for ages to wake him up.

And that was the end of the 3 week gorilla loop we did into Uganda. Some of the people were leaving the trip here and we were picking up new passengers the next day.