Murchison Falls Trip

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Uganda Trip-August 2007

At the beginning of August I went on a two week trip to Uganda. The principle aim of the trip was to catch one of the monster nile perch that lurk in the Nile below the spectacular Murchison Falls. We also planned to go to Rwanda to see the Mountain Gorillas. The trip got off to a good start-we were travelling with Ed Ghuai in his open top landrover. The first day was a long one-15 hours to Jinja at the source of the Nile. The last 100kms were in the dark on a broken piece of diversion (they are repairing the main road) filled with enormous pot holes. Shortly before Jinja our car was shunted from behind by a huge truck that couldn’t stop quickly enough on the loose gravel. Thankfully the damage was minor and no one was hurt. The next day we made it to Murchison Falls National Park after another long day on shitty roads. We had noticed that the back left wheel hub was leaking oil…more on that later.

We camped right at the top of the falls. The park is a beautiful place and was super green following lots of unseasonal rain. The first morning hopes were high and we were up at the crack of dawn to start fishing. We had a quick go above the falls without much luck and then after breakfast made our first trek down to the bottom of the falls to where the real fishing is done. Got our first view of the spectacular falls where the whole Nile funnels through a 7m gap in the rock. The fishing was hard going owing to much unseasonal rain which had coloured the water and brought up the levels. We actually met a professional fishing guide at the Falls who had 4 clients with him and he showed us the ropes but warned us that fishing in August is not the best. He also took us down the river on his boat which was awesome. Down stream the river flattens out and the collections of crocodiles that gather on the bank to sun themselves beggar belief. I even managed to catch a small one accidentally in my cast net whilst trying to catch bait fish. He was carefully extricated and released after a few photos.

We fished for most of 3 days and although I myself had little luck, my brother Ki and Ed Ghaui caught a few including a 22kg Sematundu catfish and a nearly 40kg Perch. The big perch was caught by Ed on a day when us Aves went to see some Chimps in a piece of forest on the edge of the park. He had cast a rapala lure close in along the bank in a back eddy when he had the huge fish take. The fish swiftly headed off down stream in the main current and Ed had no option but to follow it down the bank-this involved jumping over slippery rocks and ultimately swimming 100m down stream to a big rock that jutted out into the river. At this point his line was caught around a rock out in the main current and with the fish continuing its run down stream his line was on the verge of breaking. Another fisherman who was fishing on the rock that Ed had reached managed to hook Ed’s line below the rock where his line was caught. Ed then cut his line in half to get it unstuck from behind the rock. He was holding on to the line attached to the fish in one hand and was trying to tie back on to the line attached to his reel when the fish went surging off down stream again. He hastily tied the biggest granny knot he could and then let go as line screamed off his reel. The fish went so far down stream that it took all the line off his reel and he was once again forced to swim after it (taking no notice of the huge crocs that cruise the water there). By this stage the professional fishing guide had seen what was going on and he came racing across the river in his boat, picked Ed up and finally landed the fish 600m downstream of where he caught it! We will never hear the end of it!

From Murchison we headed down along the edge of the Ruwenzoris and through Queen Elizabeth National Park. We were headed to Rwanda where we had 2 days of gorilla trekking booked. On the morning of the day that we were due to get to Rwanda the problem with our leaking back left hub got slightly more serious when the whole wheel caught fire for no apparent reason. We thankfully had a fire extinguisher to hand and quickly put it out. We then realised that our back left wheel bearing had actually totally disintegrated and we could not drive any further because when we tried the wheel got so hot that it caught fire again. We spent the whole afternoon trying to remove the bearing but did not have the right tools. We had now missed our first day of Gorilla trekking but were determined to make the second. We parked the car in a local person’s garden and then removed the whole back axle. We hired a matatu mini bus to take us all the was to Ruhengeri in Rwanda to see the gorillas and abandoned the car with a guard to watch over it. We made it to the gorillas-they were fantastic! We went to see a group with 21 individuals including 4 babies between one and two years old who were absolutely adorable. They were never more than 5m from us and the huge silver back was awesome! The babies kept on tumbling over his back whilst play fighting and he was amazingly tolerant.

We made it back to Uganda the same day. We had initially decided to take the back axle with us to Kampala (300km away-the only place where we could get spare parts) but on returning to the car we decided that it would probably be best to take the whole car to Kampala so we put the back axle back on and managed to hire a truck off a local business woman. We found a dodgy bank to drive the car onto the lorry but not until we had used a hacksaw to cut off the back half of the roof of the lorry so that the car would fit. We all rode on the lorry to Kampala-7 hours drive away. Ki and I sat in the car on the back of the lorry with Mum and Dad in the front. We off loaded it at the Toyota garage in Kampala and they had the car fixed the next evening so we eventually made it home only a day late!

Copy and paste this link to see photos of the trip:

http://bristol.facebook.com/album.php?aid=7041&l=2fd6f&id=503568147

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