Murchison Falls Safari & Nile Cruise

I think Shalina and I took 500 photos between the two of us over the few days were were gone, all of which are amazing (of course), but I'll try and put of some of the best ones here. I need to start a site to share all my photos, but we'll see if that happens before I'm state-side again...

We left Wednesday afternoon from Kiboga to head to Kampala, where we feasted on coffee treats and had dinner with friends. The safari company we used, Red Chilli's, has a compound outside of Kampala and so we stayed there Wednesday night before leaving early in the morning to start the drive up to Murchison Falls National Park. We got there kind of late and there weren't enough beds for our group so we got a free upgrade to this huge fancy house! It was wonderful, and we had lovely hot showers. Perfect start to the trip.

Thursday we met our safari group (in total there were 7 of us Americans and 1 Welsh guy) and then spent most of the day driving. We got to the park around 4pm, and to the basecamp in the park near the Nile around 5pm. Even though most of the wildlife lives across the Nile we started seeing animals as soon as we entered the park! Warthogs, baboons, and various antelopey creatures were pretty brave and barely moved out of the way for our vehicle. This family of warthogs lives at the basecamp and searches for any food left out or ventures inside tents for snacks...

We wanted to stretch our legs before dinner so five of us hiked down the short hill to the Nile (and were told we shouldn't be wandering around without guns...eek) to see our first hippos!! We saw millions more the next day (only a slight exaggeration), but it was very fun to start the safari early.

We also saw more hippos late that night--outside our tent! The hippos come out of the water at night to feed, and apparently the grass at the basecamp is super delicious. They warned all of us extensively to steer very clear of camp hippos, so it's pretty unnerving when they are close enough to touch through your tent wall. They are also SO. LOUD. when munching on grass two feet away from you!

The next morning we were up before sunrise to hop in our sweet pop-top mutatu to get on a ferry across the Nile and start our safari! We had a ranger join us to help us spot and ID the animals, and also carry a terrifying automatic weapon "just in case" (BTW, not the weapon I was imagining when they said he'd have an "elephant gun"...)



So safariing we went! Like I said it was the best time I've ever had before 8:30am--we'd seen at least one group of every animal by then. And by group, I often mean animals dotting the landscape as far as the eye can see--it was totally unreal.

Here are some of my favorites, like Uganda's national animal--the kob!

Lion! Eating a warthog!

Me and some giraffes! There were soooo many giraffes!

And we were so close to them! And all the animals really--almost uncomfortably close sometimes.

Elephants! This guy was super handsome, and I got my wish to see some baby elephants before we left the park--sooo cute.

Many more animals, and many more pictures--too many to post. After the game drive in the morning, we went back to camp for lunch and a quick nap in the scorching heat, then boarded a double-decker boat to cruise up the Nile to Murchison falls.

The breeze on the boat was lovely, and we got to see most of the animals again as well as new water animals and tons of birds!




Here's me and a family of elephants!

Zoom in on the elephants

Nile crocodile! They were very hard to get a good pic of since they'd dive under water when we got too close, but were so huge and were awesomely green and black. So sweet.

Soooo many hippos. I didn't know there were so many hippos! They dig tunnels in the shallows so it looks like they're all floating in deep water, but when one stands up you can see that the water is barely up to their chubby hippo knees. I really enjoyed talking about hippo tunnels the entire trip--don't they sound like fun places?

We got to climb out of the boat near the falls and take photos on rocks before cruising back down to base camp. A lovely lovely afternoon.

We paid a little extra to do a wine and cheese sunset tour of the Nile, which was a wonderful $20 spent. We got waaaay too close to all the animals in our tiny boat with our brave captain who liked to bellow back at the male hippos who tried to warn us off from their 'schools' of females.

The next morning before we did the long drive back to Kampala (on which we got two different flat tires) we got to hike up to a view point of Murchison Falls and it's sister waterfall Independence Falls (it appeared in 1962 after a flood and is only around certain times of the year, so we were very fortunate to get to see both of them in all their glory!

We then hiked down some cliffs to visit the top of the falls. Me being me, I managed to jump down hard on a clump of soft dirt that was posing as a rock and starting sliding down the cliff! I tried to get my footing but just kept finding dirt and sliding further. Luckily I found a teeny tree root to grab, and pulled myself back up before anyone else had reacted to what had happened. The dirt is super soft and rich in mica, so while I was covered in it after my little fall I wasn't scratched at all, and I glittered the rest of the day! (My shoes are still filled with sparkly mica, so all my socks will get sparkly too...)

I have a billion gorgeous photos of the falls that I am pretty sure I could sell as postcards. Here's me at the end of a rainbow leaning on what used to be a precarious footpath across the falls.

The trip was AMAZING AMAZING even though we didn't pay extra (and spend two more days) to see the rhinos and the chimps. It was a wonderful break from work and worth every cent we spent! :)