Murchison Falls

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Murchison Falls has been described as "the most spectucular thing to happen to the Nile along its 6700 km length." Therefore, we decided to make it our next stop after Jinja. Upon arriving in Kampala, Uganda's capital, we discovered that all of the budget organized tours to Murchison were booked out for the foreseeable future. Our only options, therefore, were to take an expensive trip or to try to do it independently. As I am sure you will have guessed, we chose the latter option.

We left the Red Chili Guest House in Kampala at 9am, along with a Canadian couple we'd met in Jinja, Tara and Dill. We walked to the end of the street and all jumped into a matatu to take us to the bus station in town, four km away. Once there, we were met with a sea of matatus and quickly discovered that we had got off at the wrong station. Not to worry - hakuna matata - several touts were keen to lead the way to the correct bus station for a small tip.

At 10:10am we were on our bus, the Masindi Junior, ready to go. After an hour and 20 minutes of sitting there in the direct sun, it finally set off into the slow, traffic-choked streets of kampala. Within 10 minutes, it stopped at a gas station to pick up a spare tyre and didn't set off again until 12:30pm. Therefore, since leaving our hostel, it had taken three and a half hours just to leave the city centre! At 5pm, we rolled into the small town of Masindi, checked into a hotel, and paid for a trip to Murchison falls for the four of us, leaving the next day.

As so often seems to be the case when travelling in Africa, our alarm clock went off at an un-Godly time for our 6am pickup. A popular activity in Uganda is primate-trekking. As opposed to paying $500 a head for an hour with the gorillas, we opted for the $25 chimpanzee trek. Our guide led us through the forest, pointing out various monkeys and insect-life, and looking and listening for evidence of the chimps; fresh faeces, half eaten fruits, chimp calls etc. After about one and a half hours, we heard a loud ruckus from somewhere in the undergrowth. It sounded as if a troop of at least 10 chimps were hunting another animal. We all looked around nervously. Just how agressive are chimps, anyway? Our guide gleely explained that they hunt and kill Colobus monkeys by simply tearing them apart - lovely!

We carried on walking for a while, listening to the occasional piercing screeches, until finally our guide gathered us together to peer along a rough track at our first chimp! We spent about 15 minutes watching him as he groomed himself and took the odd snack. Then, some of his friends came along and they all disappeared into the jungle. From that time on, we only got the briefest glance of a chimp, but knew they were tantalizingly close due to all of the noise. A little disappointing, but we were thankful that we got to at least see one.

Next stop was lunch at the Red Chili Rest Camp before getting on a 3 hour boat ride along the Nile river to Murchison falls. Unlike our last jaunt down the Nile, this was a relaxing affair, gliding past hundreds of hippos, some huge crocodiles, and two elephant families. The falls themselves were quite spectacula, with the Nile being briefly channeled through a six meter gorge, creating the mother of all rapids. You wouldn't catch me going over this in a raft! The sheer force of the water reacted with the rocks to send foam floating down the river. We all joked that it was actually caused by the locals doing their laundry upstream from the falls!

That night, we had dinner and drinks at the Red Chili Rest Camp while watching numerous warthogs wander among the tents and past the bar. In the middle of the night we also heard the grass from aroud our cabin being ripped up by a hippo!

The next day, we started with an early morning (what else?) game drive. We saw dozens of giraffes and gazelles and even a love male lion and a female with cubs. The final activity was a trip to the top of the falls. The water rushed over with such force, sending a dense mist high into the air. The mere thought of falling in sent shivers up my spine, ensuring we stayed well away from the edge.

After another night at masindi, we got the local bus back down to Kampala. It took us only four hours to reach our hostel, the same journey that took 8 hours on the way up. We would have chalked it u as a successful bus ride had we not been stuck on the long back seat with 4 other adults and a kid, meaning there was no shoulder roon whatsoever. When one person shifted their body position, everyone else had to. To make matters worse, the man next to me had absolutely putrid breath, and the woman next to Scott had the strongest body odour I've ever had the misfortune to be around! No wonder the lady two rows in front of us spnt half the trip throwing up out the window!

We were dreading the next day as we had to do the trip back to Nairobi, the same one that I wrote about in the last blog (when we thought we would have to invest in new internal organs!). The journey actually started out great. We set off only 10 minutes late, which is remarkably on time by African standards. Our bus seemed fairly new and the driver fairly sane. The best change, however, was that he took a different route and the roads were sooo smooth (smooth being a relative term, you understand).

After 9 somewhat blissful hours, our luck ran out. We came to a standstill at the side of the road and eeryone thought we were making a toilet break, so ran off into the bushes to find a suitable spot. When everyone regrouped, our driver explained that the gears had failed and we had to transfer to another bus which was coiming from the next town an hour away. As we waited, we noticed that the sunny skies and warm temperatures we'd enjoyed in Uganda had been replaced by ominous looking black clouds and a cool wind. When our replacement bus arrived, everyone transferred their luggage and piled on. The lady in front of me has acquired a live chicken, but was made to place it under the bus with all the luggage - poor thing!

After a couple of false starts with the engine stalling, we were on the road again. The beautiful smooth paved roads quickly gave way to potholed dirt roads and I spent the rest of the trip holding the window closed. As soon as I let it go, it would bounce open, letting in clouds of dust, not to mention an icy cold wind. Our estimated time of arrival of 7pm turned into an actual time of arrival of 11:30pm - not exactly the most ideals time to be arriving in one of Africa's most dangerous cities! The final straw came when we unloaded our backpacks and found them covered with, you guessed it, chicken poo! Yuck!

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Photos

Scott buying rope from a tiny village.
He had a hair-brained idea to dangle it in front of a lion like a ball of string before a house cat....

Red Chili Rest Camp
Our home at Murchison Falls, with resident warthogs!