I just got back to Kampala from a very cool weekend away. My colleague, Adwoa, invited me to come with her family to Murchison Falls National Park, which I believe is the largest national park in Uganda. It had some bad publicity recently when two British tourists happened upon some rebels, who then killed the tourists. There are some rough stories about the north because of ongoing war, which is really unfortunate. We all had to assure everyone back home and in Kampala that we would be extremely cautious because we were going to an area that wasn’t being recommended by various official sources. But we did take precautions – including bringing along a guard in our car with us. George has worked at the park for 23 years, knows it inside and out, and carries a very large rifle. I felt pretty comfortable with George. The park rangers were also spending more time patrolling the park to make sure it was clear of rebels.
We left Kampala on Saturday morning. We arrived first at the Falls, which is about a half an hour away from the lodge. It’s a pretty powerful waterfall. If you know your geography, the Nile begins at Lake Victoria, slightly east of Kampala in Jinja. The Victoria Nile flows north and then west to where Murchison Falls takes in into Lake Albert. It then flows north from Lake Albert, where it becomes the Albert Nile. Eventually it makes its way through Sudan and Egypt.
Then we went to our lodge for the night, the Nile Safari Camp (http://www.innsofuganda.com/nile.html), which really is like camping. Lots of stars, and bugs, and I even slept in a tent. It was nicer than a tent though. There was a wooden room and I had a full bathroom, but there was still a strong canvas tent built into it where my bed was. I went to sleep at night to the sound of frogs and hippos.
On Sunday morning we woke up at 5:30am to take a game drive through the park. It’s better to go in the morning because it’s cooler and the furry critters are more active. I can’t even begin to describe how exciting seeing these animals are up close and personal, and in their own homes! Not like the zoo. Unless you’ve seen it, I don’t think it’s possible to really appreciate how incredibly graceful a herd of giraffes looks running (galloping, gliding…) across the savannah. They are so beautiful – that was definitely my favorite sighting. The elephants were second on my list. I’ve never seen a creature quite as powerful. We saw one close up, and he wasn’t too happy about it so he started running towards our car. I took a picture from out of the roof of the car, and I’m curious about how it will turn out, since he was running and we were moving away fast. It will probably be a big gray blur. Because we weren’t close enough to be in danger and we had a very good driver, we weren’t at all in danger – but it was pretty thrilling.
We stopped for breakfast at a bush camp, and saw our first out-of-water hippo lumbering down a trail to the water. These guys are really funny. They spend pretty much all day in the water and then come back to land at night to feed. I don’t think that sounds too bad as a life. They make a very distinct sound when they are in the water too, which I heard going to sleep at night and waking up every morning, since my lodge room overlooked the water. It caused some weird dreams, that’s for certain!
Continuing on, we saw many more giraffes, elephants, bush bucks, water bucks, hippos, water buffalo (which are more dangerous than any of those other animals apparently), oribis and other deer/antelope-like animals. We saw about 30 species of birds too, which I won’t list out since my dad may be the only one who really cares. The top three sightings of birds for me though, were 1) the rare Shoebill Stork, 2) Red-Throated Bee Eaters, and 3) the Gray Crowned Crane, which is Uganda’s national bird.
We ended the tour thrilled by everything we saw, and ferried back to the south side of the lake for lunch (and for me, a nap).
In the afternoon we took a boat ride up the Nile in the direction of the falls. We saw many more birds, we saw hippos in the water up close and personal, and many more crocodiles than I am comfortable with seeing. I’m told that they were all pretty small, but they looked big enough to me!
On Monday morning we woke up before dawn again to drive to Budongo forest, which is either just inside or just outside the park. It’s about two hours away from the lodge. There is a conservation project there which works with school groups and brings people to the park to see Chimpanzees and other wildlife in their natural habitat. There are three Chimp families in the forest. The staff of the project have “habituated” one of the groups, which means that they are accustomed to humans being there. That doesn’t mean they like them there though. We tracked the group with our guide, Joshua, quite quickly and saw several of them up in the canopy. They made a lot of noise on a few occasions, which was a little scary sounding but apparently they were having disagreements amongst themselves. They did, however, make it known that they were unhappy we were there. They tried to pee on us. Luckily, our wise guide had positioned us far enough away and in a place where there weren’t good branches directly overhead. Something tells me this trick was learned the hard way.
In Budongo Forest we also saw Black and White Colobus Monkeys and Baboons. That was pretty much it, not that we complained! We were there to see the Chimpanzees, and we saw them.
It was a fantastic trip and I am so grateful to Adwoa and her family for adopting me for the weekend. Now I just have to get back into the frame of mind to work!
No comments:
Post a Comment