Murchison Falls

Hello everybody! Again its been too long since I've posted an update, but I've got a good one this time. This weekend I went on a great trip to Murchison Falls National Park, the largest national park in Uganda. My friends Jo and Rosie from the UK and I departed Saturday morning with the tour company run from our hostel, along with 8 other travelers. After getting through the Kampala traffic jam, fixing a mechanical problem, and enduring what must have been at least a 5 km stretch of road with speed bumps every 5 meters (something related to road work), we finally arrived at the park.

Fun with speed bumps

Before heading to our campsite, we stopped at the top of Murchison Falls to take in the view. Massive volumes of water crashed violently against the rocks, dropping back down into the calmer stretch of the Nile.

View from the top of Murchison Falls




Rosie, Jo, and I looking out over the Nile

We headed to the campsite where tents had been set up with mattresses for us. After having a simple but nice dinner they cooked for us, we headed to bed early to get enough rest before our early 6 am wake-up the next morning. We woke when it was still dark, had some breakfast, and walked down to the bank of the Nile to take the "ferry" across for our game drive.

Beautiful sunrise, but a poor quality photo

Driving the cars onto the ferry


On the other side of the river we were joined by our guide for the morning, Emanuel, who would take us on the safari. Safaris in Uganda are not very well known, unlike Kenya and Tanzania, because during Idi Amin's rule massive amounts of game were wiped out, and they are just now starting to build up the animal population again. But this meant that there were much less tourists than at more popular parks, so there usually weren't tons of cars surrounding the exciting animals that we found. We managed to see tons of giraffes (one of my faves), some water buffalo, countless antelope-type of animals, and to our delight, LIONS! Our guide said lions are usually only spotted maybe 40% of the time since there are relatively few in Uganda. We managed to see two, a young male and a female, and got to park quite close to them. They got up soon after and walked towards our car, getting almost unnervingly close before they passed behind the vehicle and into the bushes.

Graceful giraffe

Peekaboo!

Some sort of antelope

The kob, which appears on Uganda's national flag

the elusive lions

any closer and I would have rolled up my window...

warthog

All in all it was great, although we were disappointed that we didn't see any elephants. The guide said that perhaps we would see some on our boat ride in the afternoon. After we finished the game drive and were waiting for the other cars to come back, we hung out with a bunch of baboons who were patrolling around the cars trying to find some food. They will leave you alone if you don't have any food on you but can get quite bold and aggressive if there is food around. There was some screaming that occurred in another car that stupidly left their door open, leading a large baboon to climb up, reach in, and grab a bag of bananas.


mother and baby baboon

just hanging out...

After we crossed back over to the campsite side of the river, we stopped for some lunch and then departed back to the water again for our boat ride. On the boat we saw tons and tons of hippos, who have sun-sensitive skin and need to stay in the water during the day. We also saw some crocodiles, who sit on the banks with their mouths open as a cooling mechanism. What we couldn't figure out is why they don't just get in the water and cool off. The boat ride took us close to the bottom of Murchison falls so we got to see it from that angle before turning around to head back to the campsite. We were about to be really sad that we saw no elephants, but right at the end we managed to see a few in the distance! Didn't get any great pictures, but it was exciting nonetheless to check that off our list.

Relaxing on the boat ride

Hippo giving me a sinister look

Some crocs cooling off

water buffalo - apparently one of the most aggressive animals

More hippos

Murchison Falls from the bottom

scummy water

Finally spotting an elephant!

We stayed in the tents one last night and then got up again at 6 am the next morning to drive to the forest where we would do the chimp trekking. This involves a hike into the woods where the guides try to find the chimps in the wild, where you are allowed to observe for one hour. However, there is no guarantee you will see chimps, as you are trying to find them on their own territory. Apparently the guides were having no luck the past 5 days finding the chimps on the regular trail, as the chimps had crossed to the other side of the road where there was not an established trail. Lucky for us, she recruited one of the employees in charge of park maintenance, who led us through the forest with his machete, cutting branches out of the way. We kept hearing the chimps calling out to each other and tried to follow the calls, but for several hours were not able to locate any. Finally, we were able to glimpse a few through the trees but they were on the move constantly, trying to gather food, so there were no good photo ops. The guide said that they are likely sick of the tourists coming through during this peak season and are trying to avoid us. Disappointed as we were to not get more time up close with them, you have to respect that its nature and not a zoo, and that we are invading the environment of the chimps and have to work on their time.

Listening for chimp calls

Hacking our way through the grass

After our tiring walk through the tall grasses, trees, and various foliage in our way, we emerged back to the lodge for some lunch before making the drive back to Kampala. It was a memorable trip to say the least!

I'm now back in Kampala for the week, trying to reach my goal of finishing my final report by the end of the week. I've got 26 pages now and still going...its a ton of information to compile. I'm not even sure who is actually going to read all of this, but its partially for myself to bring together all the work I've done and at the least it will give me a head start on my thesis. More later!