Daniel and I just got back from a little two-day camping safari. After all, I'm in Africa! I call it a 'safari' but it's probably not the experience many people associate with the word. Basically, we went camping at a beautiful national park, Murchison Falls, and took three excursions: a game drive, a boat trip up the Nile toward the falls, and a drive up to the top of the falls. Loved the scenery, loved never knowing what animal I'd see with the next turn of the head, loved the fact that I was there having a safari with my son. In Africa!!
The waterfall was magnificent. It's not so wide but it's the whole, wide Nile River squeezing itself through a 25-foot-wide gorge. I have no idea how deep the drop is, but you can get near enough to feel the power it produces plunging past you. I think when I've seen other waterfalls, it's been below, and from a distance. I loved being above the surge.
The boat ride took us past some of the largest crocodiles I've ever seen. Word has it that they feed on Nile perch that can weight up to 200 pounds. I can only wonder if that's true or something a tourbook writer made up.
What other animals did we see? We saw graceful giraffes, hippy hippos --lots of them, during the boat ride, at least one belligerent buffalo who didn't like having his photo taken and starting running toward our vehicle (plus lots of disinterested ones, too) and many varieties of anxious antelope (but the one I hadn't seen before and found to have an interestingly-shaped face was the Jackson Hartebeest.) We saw a couple of elephants, just as dusk was falling, not very close up. We saw lots of ugly/cute warthogs, including the ones that amble around the grounds of the rest camp (Red Chili Pepper backpacker's camp-- I think it's well known in some circles); they look pretty tame but we were warned not to test them. We saw lots of beautiful birds -- I'm back to the alliteration, did you notice? -- including the crested crane which is on the Ugandan flag.
The lions were hiding from us. Our guide, who rode with us in Danny's landrover, took us to the river at the end of the afternoon, hoping they would arrive to drink but it was not to be. We had to catch the last ferry crossing at 7 p.m. in order to get back to the camp, but we would have loved to stay for some night viewing.
The park is in far western Uganda, adjacent to Lake Albert-- which is where the Victoria Nile becomes known as the Albert Nile for the next leg of its journey. Across the lake/river we could easily view the Blue Mountains in DRCongo.
It's always fun to see monkeys and baboons along the road. Some of them just sit there and look at you ... others run away as the car gets closer. I always feel a kinship.
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