Safari!

After aborting our island jaunt, we caught a minibus to Kampala, Uganda's capital. We'd been seriously craving a quiet lakeside retreat, and (at the time) pretty crushed the Banda Island thing had fallen through. The prospect of returning to another crazy capital city was not an appealing one. On top of it all, our shorts were still sopping wet from having had to wade back to the beach when we canceled on the boat trip.

And then we reached downtown Kampala. The streets were jammed in a category of gridlock I had not thought possible. The density of people, vehicles and shops were beyond what we'd experienced so far, there was mud everywhere, and it was bloody hot out. It was as if the world had conspired to affirm for us one fact: you don't want to be here! I personally had conceded to never reaching anywhere clean and quiet ever again in my entire life, but as our minibus once again became wedged in a sea of its brethren, Alanna announced we were getting off and heroically led us straight to our hotel, which was magically (to me at least) not that far away.


It turns out our accommodation (and the main minibus rank) is situated at the heart of Kampala's 'wholesale district', an especially cramped and hectic part of town. Though our hotel was perfectly adequate, leaving the building we'd often have to dodge men charging along the sidewalk with stacks of mattresses on their heads, or hefting giant industrial bags of plastic sandals off the back of a truck. The rest of the city wasn't so bad, and we came to enjoy Kampala, returning to it two more times between our excursions into rural Uganda.

View from our balcony.

Our first such outing was a three-day safari package to Murchison Falls National Park run by Red Chilli Backpackers, a hostel in the Kampala suburbs. It's advertised as 'budget' and is obviously geared towards the backpacker crowd, and the price, though not an absolute steal, was appealing. What they reserve for the small print is that meals aren't inclusive, which tops up expenses somewhat. Also, Murchison Falls National Park is a seven-hour drive away from Kampala, which, there and back, tends to cut into that oft-quoted 'three days'.

Day one was, inevitably, mostly driving. We stopped for a split-second tour of the falls themselves – said to be the 'most powerful' in the world. Here the entire Nile river squeezes through a six-meter-wide gap in the rock. But, mostly driving. I read an entire Nick Hornby novel.


Red Chilli operates a rest camp within the park, where we spent two nights in a double safari tent. The camp is unfenced, and a family of warthogs browses the property on a regular basis. After dark, hippos leave the cool of the Nile river to forage on land, and apparently wander the camp once lights are out. We didn't see any but other guests encountered a few on a late night trip to the toilet. By the way, the Nile begins in Uganda, how is this not common knowledge?




Day two we went on a morning game drive through the park and then a fantastic little boat ride up the Nile to see Murchison Falls from the water. The game drive was much what I'd expected a safari to be. We drove it in the same minibus we'd ridden from Kampala – the whole roof conveniently pops up, allowing us to stand and enjoy a 360-degree view of our surrounds. We had a guide in the vehicle spotting animals for us, though the knowledge he offered didn't go very far beyond each animal's average weight and lifespan.

aboard the ferry across the Nile

I was pleasantly surprised at the density of animals in the park – I'd expected a pocket of buffalo here, some antelopes over here, but it was pretty much nonstop animals wherever we were: plenty of buffalo, warthogs, giraffe, and a wide variety of brownish antelopey animals ranging from the goat-sized duiker to the large and dunce-looking Jackson's hartebeest. We saw a single elephant, and a lion from just about as far away as a lion can be while still being categorized as 'seen'. No leopard, darnit.



A group of baboons kept us entertained as we waited for the ferry to take us back across the river to the camp. In the morning we'd been advised to keep our bagged lunches out of sight, as the baboons will take them away from you. Monkeys are a source of much amusement and adoration obviously, but up close, once one gets a sense of a baboon's size and the way its shoulder muscles pump when it walks, 'tree-climbing humanoid pit bull' becomes the appropriate description.

Uh, buddy, you may not realize this, but, uh...

In the afternoon our group returned to the river and boarded a small double-decker catamaran for a river cruise. Our guide for the river trip was more informative that the game drive man, and over the course of the two-hour trip to the falls we passed some buffalo, a good number of crocs and more hippos than anyone could hope for.


Now I know 'once in a lifetime' is a term thrown around generously when discussing any number of African experiences, but I believe it is safe to say that no one reading this – or even the friends of people reading this, for that matter – knows anyone who's seen what we witnessed. Halfway up the river we passed a full-blown dead hippopotamus, bright pink and bobbing ribs-up in the water. Better than a leopard tenfold in my books.

Thar she decays

But missus hippo-corpse doesn't win the trophy for most photographed moment – no, such an honour could only be bestowed on when the Red Chilli motorboat intercepted us mid-cruise to heroically replenish the much-depleted beer cooler. While it seemed totally awesome at the time, the photo isn't that great and I won't include it here.

Returning down the river we came across a big daddy elephant grappling with some branches right at the water's edge. On our trip we haven't seen as many elephants as I'd expected, given that they're dangerously overpopulated in some areas, but even one alone was pretty breathtaking. Not only are they huge and majestic and all that, but there's something in the way they move about that I as a human can identify with. Whereas many monkeys share more body language in common with squirrels than people (to the untrained eye at least), I feel like if I were trapped in an elephant's body I would act basically the same as the elephants we've seen. Which is comforting, for whatever reason. Anyway, this elephant seemed a bit grumpy.


On day three on the way back to Kampala we stopped for some 'Rhino tracking' at Siwa Rhino sanctuary. In my mind, I saw this as sneaking through the jungle on the heels of a guide who'd be busy analyzing snapped twigs and rolling balls of dung between his fingers. But because the rhinos in the park are under 24-hour scrutiny, it was more like a guy in green fatigues radioing his buddies in the bush and us marching directly to the animal. Our guide was no doubt a rhino expert, and probably had much interesting information to convey, but most of this was directed at the handsome Dutch couple at the front of the line and we couldn't hear anything. We reached the rhino and met two more armed rangers who until our arrival had been lounging on a mattress in the shade with some snacks. The rhino too was installed under a tree, pup at her side, the day being too hot for either animal to move more than an occasional ear. We couldn't get too close, and the animals were difficult to see in the mottled shade. But what can you do. Everyone hung around, took photos, asked a few questions, and then we turned around and trudged back. Personally I was just as excited by the trio of frogs I discovered miraculously living in the water tank of a toilet back near the parking lot.


We'll never really know whether our money could have been spent on something less hit-and-miss, but we had fun, and I don't think we realize how lucky we were to have an entire park to ourselves for a game drive – my impression of the more popular parks in South Africa or Tanzania is that they get, er, busy. We briefly discussed doing another safari in Kenya, but both agreed that unless we doubled our budget, we'd find ourselves doing much the same thing. Maybe on a next trip we'll be financially stable enough to do some magical ten-night refuge in the Serengeti – but until then, the geckoes hunting moths around hotel lightbulbs will keep me just as happy.