So Sunday morning Cait and I left the Red Chilli hostel in Kampala to head out on the Murchison Falls safari. We were in a safari van with a family (Nancy and David and their 21 year old son, Gabe). They were really nice, which is good because on these sorts of trips whoever is in your car you end up spending a lot of time with. The traffics getting out of Kampala was (as is typical) pretty bad. After a few hours we stopped in Masindi for lunch, where I attempted Mexican for the first time in Africa. I had beef fajitas, and they were actually pretty good. From Masindi, the rest of the road to Murchison is a dirt road. It was as usual, quite bumpy. Once we entered the park, we still had about another hour and a half on the road. We started seeing a lot of baboons. They are really quite interesting looking with their bright pink butts. Quite unique.
We arrived at the camp. They spent a lot of time warning us about the warthogs that frequent the camp. They apparently have an incredible sense of smell and if you have any food or food-smelling stuff in your tent, they can smell it and will come and basically tear the tent apart trying to get to it. So any food we had we had to leave in a box behind the bar where they could lock up at night. They also said that the baboons don't have as good a sense of smell but that they are smarter than the warthogs and so when they see the warthogs sniffing around a tent they'll go over and actually unzip the tent to get in and then go through all your stuff to get to the food. So Cait and i put all our food, and scented conditioner, toothpaste, mint Chapstick, gum, etc. in the box. When we woke up in the morning, I found a mint crisp Cadbury bar in my backpack... So I guess they didn't smell that one after all.
The first day at the camp we got there around 5, so we just hung out and had some drinks and dinner and celebrated Cait's 30th birthday. I bought her a beer and we even had banana fritters for dessert. This was bananas battered in a batter that tasted like funnel cake, fried, and then had honey on top. All for 5000 UGX, or about $2. Very nice.
Monday morning we woke up at 5:50 to leave the camp by 6:30. You have to make sure you leave early because there's a ferry over to where the game drive is and it leaves at 7 and only fits 8 cars. So if you miss that one, you have to wait until 9, by which point you will not get to see as many animals because 1. They are more active in the early morning and 2. The other cars will scare them away. So we got there and we're the third car in line, so it was no problem. Then when we got to the other side we all ran and got into the van as fast as we could so that we were actually the first car into the park! It was quite masterful.
The game drive was good, although not to the level i had experienced in kenya. They dont let the vans go off-road (they have Ugandan Wildlife Authority rangers that ride in each van to enforce this. They also know all about the animals and plants and so they serve as your guide on the drive) so the animals are further away from you since you can't just go tearing off to wherever they are. We did get to see two lions. One was a male hat only had 3 legs, apparently poachers come in and lay down these wires to cripple the animals, this lion had encountered such a wire and ended up losing his leg. Our ranger, Ronald, said that they had a type of vet that came in to do surgery on animals that stuff like that happened to. Intense. We also saw giraffes, elephants, Jackson hartebeest, and LOTS of Ugandan Kob. The Kob is a type of antelope that appears on the Ugandan crest, and they are really beautiful animals.
Giraffe:
I must say, I really love safari. They drove us down to a part of the Nile (I believe it is the Albert Nile) where there are a ton of hippos to see.
It was VERY sunny in my eyes. I had an immensely hard time keeping my eyes open for pictures out there!
After the game drive, we took the ferry back across and lunch at the Red Chilli rest camp where we were staying. I had a steak and onion sandwich with garlic mayo that was actually incredible, but I could taste the garlic for the rest of the day!
In the afternoon, around 2:15 we went out on our boat cruise up the Nile (this means actually heading south, which is upstream) to the base of the falls. It was SO hot, so the breeze on the boat was much welcomed. We got to see more wildlife on the boat, including some elephants more close up (which Nancy in particular was excited about, since she is super obsessed with elephants). We saw a lot more hippos and a ton of different birds that one of the boat guys identified for me while I kept a list on my iPad. Closer to the base we saw crocodiles. They apparently hang out in this kind of alcove where it's calm and catch lots of fish there. When the fish go over the falls they get very weak and kind of crazy and so at the bottom it's a very good place for the crocs to feed. You would absolutely not want to jump out there and go swimming. Also the current, even quite a bit downstream from the falls was very intense. We got decently close to the bottom, and they showed us there are actually two sets of falls. The main one is Murchison falls. The whole Nile used to go over it, so it's very rough! In 1959, Winston Churchill commissioned the building of a bridge over the falls, which was completed in 1961. Then in 1962, there were such heavy rains that the river flooded a ton, and not only did it wash out the bridge, but the water got diverted and made a second set of falls. Since 1962 was the year of Ugandan independence from Britain, they called this second falls Freedom Falls. It's volume of water per second is about 2/3 of Murchison, but both are just sick volumes, if you consider the whole Nile goes over them, it's a LOT of water. We stopped by this little island where you could get out on a big rock and take pictures. It was awesome.
Then on the way down the river, Cait and. I had a Nile Special (beer) on the Nile. Pretty awesome.
Back at the camp, I took a shower (all they had was cold water, but it was so hot out there, that I honestly didn't mind it) and we ordered dinner. We sat with the family (the Toole's) for dinner and chatted with them most of the night. It was so buggy out that that I didn't stay up late and retreated to my tent a bit before 9.
Then Tuesday was the last day of our safari. In the morning we drive to the top of the falls, where a ranger took us on a short hike to take pictures of the falls. This was just incredible, and by far my favorite part of the trip. We got to get up really close to the top of the falls, and there were rainbows everyway you looked. There was one overlook in particular, where you just got misted constantly, and I had to keep wiping my camera lens dry situation it would even work!
And lots of rainbows:
Murchison falls from a distance:
It was just gorgeous and a perfect end to our trip. On the drive back, we again stopped in Masindi for lunch, and this time I went with the goat muchomo (goat sautéed with onions and peppers). I really like goat actually. It was surprising that at the place we ate the goat was actually more expensive than the beef. Of course, we go there right after two other tables had just sat down, so our food took over an hour to come out!
We finally arrived back in Kampala and met Lisa at Red Chilli hostel in Kampala (in the Bugolobi neighborhood). We showered and I attempted to repack/organize my huge suitcase. We took a matatu to Centenary Park in Kampala for dinner and went to Efendy's, a Turkish/middle eastern place, where we had dinner and some houka. Yet another celebration for Cait's bday, and we ended up staying out past 11 (super late for us!).
Yesterday (Wednesday) we just slept late and then had breakfast and spent the morning using the Internet at red Chilli. Then we headed out via matatu to the city center. We found the coffee shop, 1000 Cups, that was Lisa's landmark for the craft market she was taking us to. It was soooo hot when we got there that rather than diving right into the craft market, we had an ice slush (kiwi flavored slush, omg it had ICE = awesome!).
Walking through Kampala in the heat can be almost unbearable. Then Cait and I hit up the craft market, as if I needed to buy more stuff. I got a pair of the beaded flip flops they sell everywhere here, a cute sundress, and a small cross body bag, as well as some earrings. All of this was under $30 total. Awesome. The. We returned to 1000 Cups for lunch, where I had the weirdest salad I've ever seen (it was a Thai beef salad, and despite the strangeness, it was really good). Then we set off for the Nakumatt, to show that to Cait (I had already been to Nakumatt in Kigali and Nairobi).
Kampala is a pretty typical East African city. It's hot and crazy. They actually do have some traffic lights but they are really just a suggestion. They painted a few crosswalks recently and no one uses them, or stops when people try to cross, so it seems the paint was a waste of money. the traffic is awful, since there's really like two main roads that cross the city, and everything runs into those roads, so there's huge traffic jams everywhere. When we were in the matatu and sitting in traffic, the driver just put on the parking brake and turned off the engine (which really amazed me, since usually matatus will just let their engine run for hours while they wait for passengers to fill up, or even while they are getting gas!). After our jaunt through the city we went back to the hostel, where we sat out with out feet in the pool and Lisa fed nuts to the monkeys while I freaked out about it. I'm not a fan of monkeys I guess.
We had dinner at Red Chilli, while watching YouTube videos on my iPad (our favorite is the Michael Bolton and the lonely island song about Jack Sparrow) since we are deprived of all such luxuries in Matuwa. We had brick oven pizzas for dinner (actually very good pizza, even by US standards, impressive). Doug arrived around 10:30, and we drove to the Keba In. In entebbe. About 20 minutes after we got there, Doug and Lisa drove Cait o the airport. I attempted to sleep, but the mosquito nets were mounted funny, so the net was on your face while you slept and it was insanely hot in my little room. Woke up at 5, and Doug drove me to the airport. They don't have a drive up option, so we had to lug my stuff across the parking lot and up stairs while it was pouring rain. Fun. Then they randomly had to search my big suitcase, which just bothers me since obviously I'm not a terrorist, and I had all my stuff packed just so. My bag weighed in at 27 kilos, but they didn't charge me for overweight, so I guess maybe they let you have more than 50 lbs? (23 kilos would be 50 pounds) so who knows. At any rate I'll hopefully have a lighter bag after South Africa, since I'll be giving Sam my extra shampoo and whatnot.
I got on the plane to Jo'burg ok, and the flight isn't full, so while I don't have a row to myself, there's no one in between me and the guy on the aisle. I'll be posting this when I land in Johannesburg, which should be in about an hour. I'm soooo excited to see Sam, and nervous to drive on the left side of the road in South Africa! We are cafe diving with great white sharks. The good news is that when I pee my pants in terror, I'll be in the water, so it'll be ok. More later!!
(uploaded from my hostel in cape town, the sunflower stop)
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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