R&R - Murchinson Falls

I’m going to keep this post short because I’ve now spent about 12 hours of my 2-day Eid vacation in the office and because, in this case, the pictures pretty much say it all :-)

To sum up:

At the recommendation of my trusty Lonely Planet guide book, I’d booked a spot on one of Red Chili Hideaway’s Murchinson Falls safaris, so I met up with the other 7 people in the group Wednesday morning, and we headed north. After stopping for lunch in Masindi, we arrived at our camp in the Murchinson Falls park mid-afternoon and then paired off to stake our claims on the tents we’d be sleeping in. The original plan was to wake up bright and early the next morning, catch the ferry to the north bank for a game drive, take a boat ride up the Nile to the base of the falls that afternoon, and then do a hike around the top of the falls Friday morning before returning to Kampala. At some point Wednesday evening though, we found out that the ferry was currently out of service, so things got switched around a bit. We ended up doing the boat ride Thursday morning, the hike around the falls that afternoon (after sitting out a thunderstorm around lunchtime), and then – since they’d managed to fix the ferry (hooray!) – the game drive Friday morning. As my mom already knows (thanks to the ecstatic text I sent her Thursday), we saw elephants from the boat (too far away for my digital camera, so no photographic evidence sadly) … which was definitely the highlight of that day for me. The hippos, alligators, warthogs, water buffalo, water bucks, eagles, and beautiful scenery were pretty cool, too though :-) And then the next morning, we added lion, giraffes, and even more elephants (!!!) to the list. In short: beautiful scenery, fun people, and finally getting to see elephants in the wild … it was like my own personal MasterCard commercial – priceless!

I’ve posted an album of pictures here – enjoy!