Murchison Falls

February 14-17, 2018

By Hector Gonzalez

February 18^th, 2018

It takes most of a day to drive from Kampala to Murchison Falls, Uganda's most famous national park. If you go the fast way, the road is smooth most of the way, and the countryside is pretty. As soon as we entered the park the animals started popping up; because it is dry season and park rangers had set off some controlled burns, there weren't as many animals as the park is famous for, but there were still quite a bunch. The first thing we saw was this cool bird; luckily I checked after I took the picture and realized I was still set on black-and-white. I quickly changed it to color. This guy, though, looks pretty in monochrome.

Next we came across this baboon family hanging out by the side of the road.

We stayed at Murchison River Lodge, and from the restaurant area we could see the sun setting behind the smoke from a nearby fires. We drank and went to bed, because the next day we had to wake up early to go on a drive through the park.

The lodge is on the south side of the river; most of the animals are on the north side. To fix that, because there are no bridges, you have to take a ferry. It runs hourly, but the animals all hide out when the sun gets hot, so you want to make sure you are there bright and early to catch the first ferry across. Here is us on the little raft.

And then we were in, ready to see cool things.

That afternoon we returned for a river cruise up to Murchison Falls itself. It's like a river safari, because all the animals come to the Nile to drink. We were supposed to hike up to the top of the falls, but my feet still hurt from my tumble over the rapids, and nobody had on appropriate shoes, and it was really hot. Plus someone told us we could just drive there the next day. So we stayed on the boat.

And we ended our day at the pool, swimming with vervet monkeys.

In the morning we took of for the waterfalls, where the mighty Victoria Nile is squeezed through a twenty-foot stone gap. It is said by some to be the most powerful cascade of water in the world.