Murchison Falls

This weekend I finally went on safari. We headed off at 5 a.m for central Uganda where the Nile goes through a huge flat plain, which is the edge of the Great Rift Valley. This area is a national park, which encompasses a vast expanse of savannah plains and a portion of the Nile. At one end, the falls for which the park is named after - Murchison Falls - are at one end of the Nile. Before Idi Amin was in power, the park had thriving numbers of many wild animals. During his reign, however, the park fell to poachers who killed off many of the animals and completely made the rhinos extinct. The numbers are starting to rise again, but I can only imagine what they were like before. 

Our group of interns + our great driver

 After hours of driving we reached the area where we were going to go chimp tracking. I didn't exactly know what this entailed, which is how I ended up tramping through the bush 30 minutes later in sandals only sandals and capris.  This was not the ideal clothing for such an adventure. We followed a chimp path into the jungle, but suddenly the path that had been cleared disapeared and we were stuck making our own way through the swamp, mud, prickly bushes, and snake invested ground. There were eight of us, including our guide, and we got kind of split up at one point when someone got a little stuck in the mud. The guide and I stood there waiting, and all of a sudden a stinging pain was searing through my right big toe, and then the same pain was on my other foot. I thought I must have been bitten by a black mamba, but upon looking down I saw I ants crawling on both my ankles and feet. They all started biting, and let me tell you that they really hold on and do not go down without a fight or a lot of pain to the victim. I was madly trying to rid myself of these ants which had proceeded to crawl up my pants and bite, but the problem was that we kept having to stop and wait in one place for the others to catch up. As there was no way to go ahead without losing people, I hopped around in my place trying to avoid landing in deep mud, stepping on any deadly snakes, or mostly just trying to keep the ants out of my pants. Then I finally thought we were through this tropical hell as we saw the light of day through some bushes. Unfortunately, though we had followed a pre-made chimp path in, there was no such path on the way out, so this forced us to make our own. Not such a big deal except the bushes we had to move through for about 8 feet were covered in these rough very short, but painful barbs. Though the guide led the way, I was second and still bore the brunt of the pain as he was wearing rubber boots, full-length pants, and a long-sleeved safari-worthy shirt. Meanwhile, I was not able to slow down and pick my wash carefully through the thicket of pain as the pain from the ants on the ground was equally unwanted. I did not find this situation amusing then, time heals all wounds, and I now give you permission to smirk or laugh at my misfortune. We did in fact locate the chimps on the edge of the jungle near a sugar cane plantation, and it was great to watch the animals in their natural habitat. We saw five or six all together, and even one mother scooped up her baby to bring to the top of a nearby tree as we approached. It was definitely worth the stress and pain to get there, but I am extremely glad I didn't know what was coming when I agreed to go chimp tracking without the proper attire.

Camping out that night, we all were exhausted and ready to sleep before starting the actual safari part the next day bright and early. We started off our by crossing the Nile on a small ferry to reach the other side of the park where a majority of the animals actually live. The sun was just rising over the water and a mist hung in the air that gave everything a soft glow in the cool morning. It was absolutely breathtaking, and made me have one of those I'm-Really-In-Africa-Moments that I still get quite frequently, even after 7 weeks here already. We crossed the river and headed off in our safari van to go experience the Ugandan version of the Lion King.

Fortunately, we got to see just about everything the park has to offer, including giraffes, hippos, elephants, warthogs (or Pumbas as the other foreign interns kept calling them), water buffalo, antelope of various sizes, waterbucks (picture a beefed up deer without antlers that can swim across a body of water even as big as the Nile), a chameleon, and many many hippos. 

The highlight of the game drive was seeing three female lions cross just a few meters in front of our vehicle. There were so many giraffes too! By the end of the ride we were like "oh wow, another giraffe big whoop" - spoiled, I know. 

Murchison Falls at a distance

After the drive we hoped on a boat that cruised up the Nile for two hours towards the Falls itself. We hoped out a bit back from the falls, and followed a guide along a four foot wide trail in the hillside to the top of the falls. The views we got of the falls were spectacular, and particularly amazing because we could get so close. The boats can't get very close because of the strength of the current and I assume various other dangers with getting so close. It would have been pretty dang perfect if I hadn't been experiencing the awful effects of getting sick from some unclean water I had used to brush my teeth with the night before. Note: I always use tap water to brush, never to drink, but I have always been fine. Then the one weekend I am actually doing something that would be super inconvenient to get sick on, I get sick. One last word about having to go to the bathroom all of a sudden when you are out in the wilderness: even when you feel terrible, being on a narrow dirt path with a nearly vertical slope above and a similarly steep slope below followed by the tumultuous, croc-infested waters of the Nile makes the whole hilarity factor of the situation ten times better. I don't think I need to say anymore, but I had to get creative and fearless very quickly. 

The following day we packed up our camp and headed to go see rhinos at a sanctuary just a few hours outside the park. As all the rhinos went extinct, they are trying to reintroduce them, but first they must go through the slow and tedious process of breading these massive animals. We were able to get very close to a sleeping pack of rhinos that were dozing off in the shade of a massive tree. One of the newest babies is named Obama, why? Because his mom was a rhino bought and brought from Disney's Animal Kingdom in the U.S. and the father was a rhino from Kenya. 

Now I am back in Kampala, and I will write more later, but now it is time for bed! 

Also, I added some photos to the blog before this one as promised, so check them out if you are interested.