Murchison Falls

November 18^th, 2023

When I was back at the hostel in Kampala at the start of my trip in Africa, Lisa from Austria had given me the name of a tour operator that she recommended for a tour she did to Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda’s largest national park.  I reached out to Benjamin and it turned out that David, a German who was in my dorm room at that same hostel, was also planning to book with David to go to the falls.  Just the day before I was supposed to be picked up by Benjamin as they drove from Kampala to Murchison Falls, I received a message from him that he had a group of three cancelled earlier in the week.  He still had 3 of us interested but then a Columbian woman named Andrea who has been living in Manchester for years (so her accent threw me off), whom I had also met at the hostel, had became ill with malaria.  Benjamin stated that it wasn’t a viable trip for him to do it for just David and me.  Hmm…we need to make new plans.

 

I emailed Murchison Backpackers, a place near the small city of Masindi where we were supposed to stay on the second night on the tour with Benjamin.  I never heard back from them but decided to head there to stay a night and figure things out.  The lady there, Doreen, was super helpful and gave me the contact info for a guy named Julius.  He offered to take both David and me for $250 USD each…which wasn’t bad as I was going to pay $210 with Benjamin and at first Doreen said her company could take us for $290.  David made his way from Kampala to the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary for one night, and stayed in the same room that I was in the three previous nights, and then we met up on Saturday morning.

 

Julius showed up and wow, what a skookum vehicle he had.  It was a big Toyota Landcruiser complete with a pop-up roof and a small fridge in the back.  It had seats for 10 but there would just be 3 of us.  This was going to be by far the most comfy ride I’ve had in this country!  We headed into town, and on Julius’ suggestion, we bought some beer, water and snacks…I like this guy already.  We stopped at a gas station, but they hardly had any beer, at least not any Nile Specials, the type I like.  Julius suggested we go to his brother’s bar…wow, it gets even better. 

Our safari-mobile:

There was a parade coming down the road in town.

Turns out that the kindergarten kids were graduating to the next level.  It was awesome that not only were they wearing their graduation gowns and caps, but they all had cool sunglasses on too!

Once supplied, we drove about 25 kilometers to the entrance of the park.  David and I signed an entry logbook while Julius paid our $40 USD fees for 24 hours in the park.  Julius informed us that we had another 75 kilometers before we would arrive at our accommodation, Red Chili’s where we would have lunch before heading on a boat cruise up the Nile towards Murchison Falls.  Along the way there were families of baboons hanging out, enjoying the heat from the pavement.

Riding with the roof popped up...why not?!?

Our first sighting of a baboon:

Red Chili’s was a cool place with a covered restaurant area and a nice view out towards the Nile.  There was a bit of a kerfuffle under an extension from the restaurant where there were some more tables as a big male baboon had snuck up to a family eating their lunch and stolen a bun from a poor, now slightly traumatized kid.  About a half an hour later, the same baboon was prowling around at a table at the perimeter of the main structure that we were under and almost got away with his desired prize of someone’s meal.

The restaurant at Red Chili's:

The view out towards the Nile.  They have a nice firepit, but unfortunately it was raining that evening.

Julius drove us to the Nile where we boarded a two-deck ferry boat.  Before getting on the vessel, I noticed a 6-foot globe on a pedestal.  On the drive into the park, I was surprised that Julius thought that Canada was part of the United States…so I had to point out our large country to him to give him a geography lesson.  He’s not the only Ugandan I’ve met who erroneously thought the same.

A warthog was munching away on the grass by the dock:

I forgot to take a picture of our boat, but it looked like this:

David and I nabbed the last two seats on the upper deck, thinking that it would give us a better viewing platform of the animals we hoped to see.  The lower deck was also much noisier due to the engine.  Unfortunately, we were in the back row and were a bit more exposed to the sun than I would have liked.

Our guide explaining what we might see on the cruise:

    

The two-hour cruise started off with sightings of a group of almost completely submerged hippos cooling off near the shore.  Soon after we spotted a giraffe and then an African elephant.  For me, it was the first time seeing a giraffe and an African elephant in the wild.  I’ve seen and rode an Indian elephant in Nepal back in 2007, but this was super cool.  Even from a distance, it was obvious that this was the king of elephants…it was bigger in all aspects, especially its ears.

A group of about 8 hippos:

Looking back down the Nile.

Gotta have a Nile beer while on the Nile!  But it was a really warm beer, so not terribly good.  Strangely they had them in a cooler...just with no ice.

Along the shore:

My first African elephant:

David started chatting with a man from Kampala, a super nice guy who had never been to Murchison Falls Park before.  His name was Charlesdickens, after the author that his mom adored.  Not surprisingly, he preferred to go by Charles.  He showed us some pictures from his morning game drive which looked fantastic, only whetting our appetites for the evening and morning drives that we had planned.

 

As we approached Murchison Falls, claimed to be the most powerful falls in the world by the guides, the rain started to fall.  David and I kept asking the female guide on the boat what constituted the “most powerful falls”.  Was it volume per time?  Was it volume and speed of the flow?  We couldn’t get a straight answer.  Later, looking on Wikipedia, Murchison is impressive, but far from the most powerful.  It’s not even the most voluminous in Africa as that goes to Inga Falls in neighboring Congo, although supposedly that’s a bit controversial.

Our first view of Murchison Falls:

It started to dump rain as we approached the shore.

The guide was telling us to head down to the bottom deck as we approached the shore.  Not realizing that we were super close to the disembarkation point, I was busy trying to put my rain protector on my backpack, putting my rain jacket on and passing my tiny umbrella to David, who was ill prepared and didn’t have any rain protection.  We scrambled downstairs and hopped off the front of the vessel which was powering against the current to stay against the shore.  The ship immediately turned around and began to head downstream.

Seeing it from land:

Julius had told us that it was about an 800-meter hike with 45 meters of vertical.  Well, that didn’t turn out to be quite right.  Not that it was an overly grueling hike, but we sure got dumped on by the rain.  The falls were more and more impressive, the closer we got.  I can see why locals call it the World’s most powerful as the whole Nile River is being squeezed through a few small gaps.

There were a few different viewpoints to enjoy.  Most of the people on the boat did not do the hike and headed back downstream and would arrive back at the starting point in about an hour.  David and I thought we were the only ones that got off to do the hike and joked that there must have been a master plan to dump the mzungus (the white guys) off in the rain.  However, since we were slow at the start, Charlesdickens and his wife and friend were ahead of us on the trail, and we caught up to them.  They were just as ill prepared as David and had no jackets or umbrellas.

The final viewpoint, the Devil’s Cauldron, was super impressive.  There was somewhat of a standing wave on the top and the gushing flow was mesmerizing.

Once we were ready to move on, we backtracked up the hill a few hundred meters, not realizing that there was a lower trail we could have taken to the parking lot where Julius was waiting for us.  Not realizing this, we laughed at a sign that we had missed on the way down, as it was facing the other way.  It stated that it cost $15 for foreigners to hike this trail.  I jokingly thought that oh, so if you were canoeing down the river and decided to pull out before these deadly waterfalls, the Ugandan Wildlife Authority wanted your fifteen bucks if you wanted to save your life.

As we approached the parking lot, we had a guide and then some soldiers comment on the fact that we could have taken the easier route.  Oh well, just a bit more exercise for us.

Back in our awesome safari-mobile, I toweled off and put on some dry clothes as we headed off to do an evening safari.  We headed down the main road, past Red Chili’s and then took a dirt road that headed west.  There were at least eight other vehicles participating in the same venture.  We saw some duikers (a small kind of deer), some giraffes that were much closer than the one we saw from the boat earlier in the day, and a leopard hanging out in a tree.

The evening sky was dynamic.

There were lots of giraffes!

Can't really see him...but there's a leopard somewhere in that tree.

Most vehicles were on their way out as the darkness set in, but Julius seemed determined to find us a lion.  One car that passed by told us that they had seen a lion about 500 meters ahead.  Wow, let’s go.  We took a fork in the road and were stopped by a couple of rangers on sitting on their bikes.  They told us that our time was up, and that they were herding the tourists out of the park.  Julius spoke to them in the local language, and it turned out that if we paid 50,000 shillings ($18 CAD), we could continue on and try and see the lion.  I had my doubts as it was getting quite dark, but David was game so we ponied up the cash and went on our way.  Sure enough, we could not find the feline and eventually decided to head back towards Red Chili’s Resort.

 

What a day!  And tomorrow the plan was to go on a morning safari which should hopefully prove to be amazing.