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After a bunch of discussions on what to do with three unexpected weeks in Uganda, we decided to take three day tour up to Murchison Falls National Park in the north of Uganda. The budget options were (1) completely booked and (2) didn’t include chimpanzee tracking, which is one of the reasons we decided to go to this area. We got an independent guide’s name and decided to give it a try. While it was definitely more expensive, it turned out to be worth every penny. We had a personal driver who was able to stop where and when we wanted, and our accommodations were fantastic. We stayed in Budongo National Forest at their new ecotourism lodge. It is amazing. I highly recommend it to anyone going in that direction. The rooms were beautiful wood lodges with dorms for fifteen dollars a night as well as private cottages. The facilities were the cleanest I’ve seen in months, the food was absolutely delicious (the best Italian since we left), and Mary Lou, the manager at the camp, is an awesome hostess. It is nicely secluded, peaceful, and luxurious at a reasonable price. We had a great time there, and as I said,
A storm and a giraffe on the horizon
Lucky for us, the rain stayed away for the day. would highly recommend it. Again, I can’t explain the natural beauty of the environment and the incredible number of animals we saw, but I’ll mention a few of the highlights.
Murchison Falls is on the Nile River and is a small little crack between two rock cliffs, almost a fissure in the rock, where the Nile River passes. It is, without a doubt, the most violent thing I have ever seen in my life. The Nile River is huge, for those in the states, think of the Mississippi, and it squeezes it through a two car garage. It is like a high-pressure nozzle on a garden hose. Most waterfalls have a bit of constancy to their flow; this is completely erratic with water spraying out, up, over, around, everywhere. It is a sight to be seen. We were able to see it from below by taking a boat trip up the river. It was a good view, but not nearly as memorable as seeing the falls from above and being able to walk around them uninhibited.
The boat ride to the falls did provide an up close and personal experience with hippos, crocs, and elephants. Hippos are incredibly
Murchison Falls
A closer look at the falls. agile for their size. One exploded out of the water less than ten feet from the boat and breached like a whale high into the air. Another time two came up from below onto a thin strip of shoreline, they ran along the boat in waist high water, and then went back under. Their size caused a huge wake to form behind them, but the most impressive feat of the maneuver was that they went at the same speed as our boat. We also saw several families of elephants hanging out by the river, taking drinks, spraying themselves, etc. There were huge males with enormous tusks and little baby elephants standing beside their mothers.
The best experience so far though was chimpanzee tracking in the Budongo National Forest (where we stayed). We left camp in the morning, and after about an hour and a half of walking through the woods, we started hearing the chimp calls. We spotted them just off the trail and crawled into the woods to get a better look. It was amazing. They looked down, inspected us, saw we were completely harmless, and then they continued to go about their daily activities. Being our closest
Hippo head
I love their ears. They look like little aliens. But one ton aliens that can bite you in half. relatives in the primate family, it is incredibly easy to see their different forms of communication. The alpha male kept going after the women by shaking the tree branches and jumping from limb to limb (Darren’s edit: This is basically how I see Kyle), a lower male would offend him in one way or the other and have to apologize (Darren’s edit: Coincidentally, I think this is how Kyle sees me), others would just stand about cleaning each other or eating the fruit on the trees. They were about twenty meters above us in the trees, so while we had to crane our necks to get a look, we had an hour to stomp around below them getting different views and observing their behavior. It is one of my favorite experiences so far on the trip.
Another remarkable part of our journey in northern Uganda is the number of missionaries, particularly evangelical Christians, running around. Now, while I have my own opinions on religion, I won’t mention them here. It is a travel blog, so I’ll stay out of religion as I have politics. However, illogical people are something of a passion, so, on that note… Our driver dropped
Random bird
I can't remember the name of this guy. I'm really bad at remembering all these names. Sorry! I promise I'll [b] try [/b] to get better. us off at the only restaurant inside the park for lunch. We walked in and noticed it was a set menu lunch for around forty dollars U.S. Unlike a lot of tourists who come to this area for a few weeks as their once-in-a-lifetime trip to Africa, we don’t have the budget for this. We were about to leave, when we heard the clanging of a glass and a minister, in the middle of three tables of about fifteen people each, shout, audibly to the entire restaurant, that it was time for prayer. Now, public prayer, saving the souls of people in that aren’t of your religion, civilizing “heathens” and archaic Euro-centric ideologies, blah, blah, blah… The blatant error in the ways of these “do-gooders” is that the sum of their meal was over two thousand dollars. The average Ugandan doesn’t earn that much in four years! There is a restaurant not five miles away that serves delicious hot dogs for three bucks each (which is where we went to eat). Why not save eighteen hundred dollars on your lunch and really help some people out? Yeah, you took a week out of your lives to build a school, but
Giraffe
Did you know that giraffes get darker as they get older? then you employed nuns that only brainwash young children with creationism (sorry, a bit into the religious debate). Obviously they could have had a few hot dogs instead of steaks to really improve the lives of some individuals, but decided to a nice fillet was more important.
On a less serious note, Darren has started wearing his hair in a ponytail. He looks like the lovechild of Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Segal (Darren’s edit: Sounds witty, but Kyle and Ben have spent about an hour debating this (Ben’s edit: by ‘an hour debating’, he means we spent an hour laughing about it while Darren kept saying “Awww…come on guys, it’s embarrassing. Don’t put it in the blog.”)). The short, extraordinarily tight ponytail of Segal combined with the obvious Bernard French-Canadian face is just ridiculous. On top of that, he sometimes just goes with a neck ponytail, leaving his bangs and wings to hang. This makes him look more like Harry (Jeff Daniels) from Dumb and Dumber. It is absolutely hideous (Darren’s edit: It’s been six months). And, speaking of hideous, Ben and I have decided to grow playoff beards until we have completed our Kili trek. We
Ben and I with our safari drive guide
That is an AK 47 he is holding. All the guides carry one. He said it was to scare stubborn elephants. However, the LRA (Ugandan revolutionaries and child soldiers) was operating in the north of the park a few years back. They are gone now, and his gun looked less useful than a slingshot when examined carefully, but it was a bit of an eye opener when he jumped in the car with us. missed those of the NHL playoffs and are in need of something to fulfill the void, but we are both failing desperately. I have to admit, Ben’s beard is much better than mine. It doesn’t consist of simply a neck beard; his facial hair actually grows on his face. However, his mustache is blonde. Mine is a nice, full, greasy, brown. And, as Bert Reynolds showed us, the power of the mustache is a mystical thing.
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It's great to get a little insight about what we are going to experience. Looking forward to joining you in a couple weeks in Africa.