SAFARI

A Disney Safari last week was great at the time, but pretty much nothing can compare to an amazing African Safari at Murchison Falls National Park!!

On Sunday morning, Godfrey met us at the HVO House with a driver and jeep that would be taking us on the long journey to the safari. Our driver’s name was Charles. Coincidentally, the last time we had a driver in Uganda named Charles was on a trip to the equator and he was the best driver we had the entire two weeks, so I knew this had the potential to be good. Thankfully, Charles lived up to his name and we had a great guide with lots to share about his country and the animals and history of Murchison Falls.

The ride up was probably the best we will have for three weeks. There is an attempt at a freeway around the main city to bypass the traffic, but it is nothing more than another beat up road with lots of potholes – I mean, craters – and a few less people, cars and boda’s to hit along the way. The further you get from the city, the more you see why they call Uganda “The Pearl of Africa” and God’s Country. The landscape is full of rolling green hills and the roads are lined with beautiful trees. Even more appealing to the eye, are the people; there are women in colorful traditional dresses carrying baskets and fruit on their head more than in the city. The children are carrying food and water and babies are tied to their mothers back in a cloth sack. Men and boys are hard at work trimming the grass with long metal blades, building a ditch of stone and cement by hand, planting gardens, and pushing bikes piles high with more banana leaves, coal, and sugar cane than I could fit in the trunk of my car! (I’m serious about this one…..sometimes the back of a bike is piled 10 or 12 feet in the air!) The air keeps getting cleaner too. I didn’t notice it as much on the way out because it was a gradual pleasant improvement, but on the way back today, I could smell the garbage and exhaust as well as the smell of thousands of people crammed into a relatively small area. It made me glad that we had our little time away in the fresh air.

The road to Murchison is paved for about 200 kilometers or so, which wasn’t the case even 2 years ago. Charles said it used to take nearly 13 hours from Kampala to the Red Chilli Camp where we stayed. Our trip took 3 hours to Masindi (the last city, and the end of paved roads) and only another 2.5 on red dirt roads to get to our final destination. More than half of the unpaved part is driving through the park property. It’s huge. I can’t remember the exact numbers, but the park is thousands of square kilometers of land. Once we entered the reserve, we saw baboons almost as often as I see squirrels running around in Minnesota. There are families with 20 or more that are eating on the short grass or the middle of the road. The mostly scatter when they see a vehicle, but occasionally one or two play chicken until we get very close. It’s almost impossible to take a picture of them because they run into the tall grass as soon as the jeep stops. It’s not a good idea to roll down the window when you stop to look at baboons because the biting flies that live near or on the baboons get in the car. We learned that the hard way, spending a few kilometers stopping every few minutes to kill a new fly that we had let in.

Further in, we crossed a couple of metal bridges that look exactly like the ones at Animal Kingdom. Obviously, Disney did their research! The road is very bumpy because it is straight up dirt going up and down steep hills all the way. We found after the rain storm on Monday that the roads keep getting worse every time large amounts of water fall and wash away parts of it. Coming down around a corner of one hill, we just had to stop and take a picture looking down into the valley. The green of the trees against the blue sky is breathtaking. All you can see for miles is trees in every shade of green. (Speaking of trees, on they way Charles showed us where they are planting pine trees to replenish the forests people have cut down to make charcoal….never thought I’d see that type of tree in this part of the world!) It seems that all the way on the drive, it kept getting better and better.

Once we got to the Red Chilli, it was about noon and we had until 2:00 before we could check in to our banda. I was expecting a tent with a public toilet and shower, but Godfrey set us up to have our own two person room with a bathroom of its own and a living room too! We ate lunch in the restaurant with a thatched roof that overlooks a view of the Nile and the Valley surrounding it only a short distance down a steep cliff. I usually don’t eat a lot of meat here, but a bacon and cheese hamburger sounded like the best thing on the menu, so it’s what I chose. The meat tasted a lot sweeter than I’m used to, but it still hit the spot.

Charles decided to take us on a game drive in the afternoon to beat the group of people that goes in the mornings. The jeep vehicles has a sunroof that you can pop your head up through to see from a better vantage point. The only pitfall was that one of the backseat windows didn’t work so Ross and Rachel kept switching sides of the car. I offered the front seat, but they liked the back better. We really lucked out on the game drive. On the ferry ride to the North side of the river, we thought we were lucky to see and hear a herd of hippos on the banks. It turns out the hippo are much more numerous than any of us expected. There are hundreds of them lined up on both sides of the river for miles and miles. Thousands of different types of antelope cover the plains of the reserve and most of them are pretty shy about the vehicles, which didn’t bother us much because the honestly look a lot like deer and move like them too.

We saw a small herd of elephants with babies that were quite a ways from us. We also some giraffe and buffalo that I thought were fairly close, but Charles told us we should keep driving because there are others closer in different places. We got close to the edge of the Nile Delta and Charles kept looking with his binoculars. It’s one of those….”you know you’re a tourist when….” moments. Whenever our guide looks in one direction, we assume it’s something excited and get on the edge of our seats, when he’s usually just scanning an area. Charles gave up on a spot and started to drive away when Rachel asked what animal was near the water’s edge. When Charles took out his binoculars again, he got excited and said “It’s a lion!” Not only one, but two, - a male and a female drinking along the water’s edge. I was content being that close to them, but apparently our driver wasn’t, because he drove off the road and onto the grass to get a closer look. We ended up within about 30 feet of the lions, who laid down in the taller grass. He revved the engine a bit and moved closer so that the two lions got up to walk further. We could have stayed and watched longer, but we had to move on so we could make it through the park and catch the last ferry. As we came around another corner, we spotted three more female lions walking around the remains of an antelope. We broke the rules again to get close. There was nothing left of the carcass except the face, bones and skin. All of the meat was completely cleaned off, so they must have made the kill at least the day before, if not longer. After more ooing and aaahing, we got back on the road. On the way back, we spotted a giraffe on our left and then noticed at least a dozen more behind it. Rachel yelled for us to look ahead and there was a giraffe, just standing in the middle of the road, reaching it’s long neck down to a short tree to grab some leaves. We drove up a bit closer and stopped. Then the giraffe took a bunch of steps towards us, then stopped and stared right at us, while we admired him and all of his friends. He must be pretty popular because when we looked on either side of the road we saw giraffe all over. I tried to count, but I lost track after about 37. There were probably about 50 or 60, just surrounding us and minding their own business. I was so thankful that I finally got to see a live giraffe! I know this might sound silly, but I threw out a little prayer a few days before saying how much I would love to see a giraffe up close. God REALLY answers prayer sometimes. I know that he does it because he loved us and loves to see us smile. I am very thankful for the gift of seeing them so close and I was content if that was all we got to see for the rest of the trip.

I shouldn’t have said that I was content with that, because on the next day’s morning game drive, we only saw tons of antelope, some elephants in the distance, buffalo, some giraffe a bit far away, and lot of pretty birds. Midway through, the clouds started to roll in and the rain came down. It felt a little like Jurassic Park when things started to go wrong. I was getting worried that either a little creature would come and spray something in my eyes, or a big one would try to eat the car. We had to drive through puddles that reached the headlights in a couple of places and it was very slow going. Eventually, I could tell we were getting close to the ferry, but we came up behind a bus full of students from Macalester (what a coincidence) who had gotten stuck coming off the ferry the day before. As we were going down a long hill, all of us gasped in fear as the bus started to lose control and slide sideways into a bank. It honestly looked as if it would tip over onto the side with the doors and trap them inside. Luckily, there was a high bank that stopped them from rolling and they were able to get out, only to stand in the downpour. We stopped for a moment to ask if they needed help, but Charles was told to keep going and that we couldn’t do any good in helping them get out.

After a few more kilometers, we pulled up just as the ferry was pulling away from the dock. We stopped to see if they would return and Charles got out of the car to check with the ranger. As he did, a baboon approached the front of the car and then jumped up on the hood. He looked around and inside; apparently thinking that Charles may have left the window open and he could reach in and steal some food. He was surprised to see us, and only stayed about 5 or 10 minutes until Charles walked up and chased him away. Luckily, the ferry came back sooner than its scheduled time and we made it back to have lunch and take a nap.

We were pretty depressed about the weather, especially since the afternoon boat ride up the river does not happen when it’s raining. When we awoke from our nap, we thought that we wouldn’t be going because it was still raining. I was surprised when Ross and Rachel returned from checking with Charles to say that we are going! We hurried to grab our things and make it down to the boat landing. There were six or seven boats lined up, most of them with double decks or large in size. Out of all of them, ours ended up being able to seat 14 people. If you line up three chairs in your kitchen, you’ll see the width of our boat, with a seven seats on each side and a little 30 horse motor on the back. It was basically an oversized canoe with a flat canopy. Perfect for the Nile, I’m sure!

We puttered around, realizing that seeing hippo was not a big deal in this area. In fact, we even saw one the night before. We heard stories of hippo coming up to eat grass at the Red Chili at night, since they are nocturnal. All of us thought it was possible, but not likely, but at 2:20 Ross woke us up to say there was a hippo. Sure enough, not more than five feet from our window was a gigantic hippo noisily munching on our grass. No need for lawnmowers when this guy is around. They eat between 50-100 kilograms each night by climbing up the high banks (don’t ask me how they get all that blubber up the hill) and eating for 4 or 5 hours straight). On the boat ride, we got a bit of excitement. A Jaws-like moment in the making. We saw a wake part as a hippo swam towards us very close to the surface. Rachel jumped to our side of the boat as we moved forward a bit. We almost missed him, but he came to the surface just in time for his head to hit our motor and knock it out of its place. Nobody was really panicking because I think there were only 4 of us who actually saw him coming. Our driver turned towards shore a bit…..right into the group of hippos standing on the bank. They were not happy and one of them opened his mouth and thrashed it back and forth with his big teeth scaring us away. I could see the headlines…..”14 tourists eaten by angry hippos”. Luckily, our driver turned the boat quickly, and the hippos were not as mad as they looked. We continued up stream towards Murchison Falls to see it from the base. Along the way we spotted some crocodile in the water and a lone elephant drinking in some reeds.

At the entrance to the falls, there were dozens of giant crocs resting on a sandy patch of shoreline, along with many more swimming nearby. Apparently, they wait there as the fish and any other things coming down the waterfall swim by. They are usually dizzy and disoriented so they are an easy catch. No surprise for an animal that always goes for the thing closest to him.

The falls themselves are amazing. It is a 45 meter drop with a gap that gets as small as 7 meters. It’s the entire volume of the Nile passing through a narrow gap. The rumors of the ground shaking all around the area are not true, but the sound and site of it is still indescribable. On the boat, you don’t get very close, but the three of us had hired a ranger, Simon, to take us on a hike to get close. We had to hike a narrow trail along the cliff for about an hour to the top of the falls, stopping every now and then for a breather and a picture. At the top, you are mesmerized by the heavy streams of water being thrust between the rocks. We were trying to decide what would kill a person first; the pressure of the water, hitting the rocks, an angry hippo, or a hungry crocodile. Regardless, fall in and you’re a goner. A year ago a man committed suicide by jumping of the rocks and his body was never found. Nobody is really surprised.

Charles was there to meet us at the falls and we had to ride for about an hour and half back to the Red Chili. We had dinner and then went back to our banda for the night to find salamanders and some really nasty looking centipedes with hard shells all over inside. Luckily Ross was able to get rid of the centipede and we eventually had to put towels in front of the door to keep them from coming under it. The salamanders stayed and I watched them eat a few of the flies and bugs in our room. We played a few rounds of UNO to pass the time before going to bed.

In the morning we got to sleep in and have breakfast of pancakes with banana and honey, French toast, and fresh fruit. We then took the long ride back into Kampala. Along the way we stopped for lunch at a hotel in Masindi while Charles filled up a tire that had lost air and got some more gas in the tank. We arrived back at the HVO House and unpacked. Then we got to lounge around and relax before meeting with Angella for dinner and planning for what we would do at the orphanages in the next two days. All in all the safari experience was amazing, with a few bits of excitement here and there. It was a nice vacation, but I can’t wait to get back to work. I want to make the most of every moment of this trip, and I know that we just have to keep plugging away at little things and doing what we can when we can. Troy will be arriving some time on Thursday and that will mean we will hit the hospital hard for the rest of the trip.