Murchison Falls National Park Game Drive

  Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda
Monday, June 16, 2008

Murchison Falls National Park Game Drive

Monday June 16th, 2008. Murchison Falls National Park
Nile Safari Camp is about 30mins drive from the ferry that crosses the Nile to the part of the park where the game driving is good. The ferry has a strange schedule but basically you need to get the 7am ferry or you have to wait until 9am for the next one. That means a 5:45am wake up :( Once we got to the ferry we had a flat tyre and had to change that on the other side but it gave us a chance to meet our guide for the day - George.
The ferry is really quite picturesque but the river does have a bunch of green/brown foam in the mornings coming down from Murchison Falls. I think this is algae but even if it is from algae this is probably because of pesticides and fertilizers. The water is murky as hell so add that to the foam and it is a little sad to think this is only a few hundred kms from the start of the longest river in the world. Its dirty before it even gets out of Uganda.
We hadn't even gotten off the ferry and we had already spotted our first animals - hippos lining the river shore next to the ferry. It turned out George was the boss of the UWA guides and was another keen bird watcher. Now we had two great guides who both loved birds...Rina and I had to work a little hard to keep these guys away from too much bird watching but this park is famous for the giant shoebill. I told George I had two animals I wanted to see while we were there - the shoebill and a leopard. Rina wanted to see giraffe.
Once the tyre was change we were off up the road and within about 10mins had spotted our first giraffe (Rothschilds) off in the distance. It didn't take long to find the local antelope (read; food) either - hartebeest, reed buck and oribi. We drove around for a few hours following buffalo, elephants and warthogs with a constant eye out for any cats in the very long grass.
George knew a place where we might see the shoebill so we headed off road for a little and stumbled on a group of 11 giraffe. Rina could not have had it better if she planned it. All were males and all hung around while we ate lunch standing under the shade of an acacia. Very cool. They kept looking at us but didn't run off. They were not more than 100m away from us the whole time.
We packed up our left overs form lunch and no sooner were we back in the car and on our way back for the 1pm ferry when George almost jumped out the window to keep his eye on the shoebill that was flying off in the distance. I caught a very quick glimpse of it so I knew there was a bird there but I couldn't see much as it flew away. We drove a little further but the bird had landed and was under the reeds. George and Martin were obviously keen to see the shoebill (there are only 10 pairs in this park and few others in the wild in Uganda) so we drove on to see if we could find where it landed. Just as we were ready to pack it in the bird popped up from the reeds and flew off again. We followed again and struggled to find it. Almost as if he had found the last remaining dodo, George yelled he had it again and sure enough there it was standing in the reeds about 200m away. It ended up a small spec in my 300mm lens but I had seen my shoebill.
The leopard evaded us again once again proving it is a mythical animal.
On the drive back to the Lodge I found out from Martin that Swahili had been dropped as a language of the people of Uganda because it was the language used by the army during the rule of Idi Amin. The language was a direct link to the people that would terrorise their own for years under the man that has sadly become synonymous with this country. As the East African Community is being rekindled (Uganda, Kenya, Burundi, Tanzania and Rwanda) it turns out that Swahili appears to be the most widely spoken language and most likely to be the one used as the standard. As such Uganda looks like adopting it as its second official language after English.
Back form the drive around 2pm we lazed around the camp, swam in the pool (a nice surprise) and napped. By dinner time the camp's generator was out so dinner would be by paraffin lamp and the tent would have a little light from the solar batteries but not much. One cool thing about the tents here was they have one power socket in each tent. Most of the others have nothing but a power point at the main tent making it impossible to charge things overnight.
Traveller's Tip: consider your battery charging needs every day. If you are travelling with a guide and his car then it is possible he will have a converter and power points in the car. If not, work out how to charge your batteries as soon as you check-in. There's nothing worse than running out of power on a video or stills camera when you are out on jungle trek.