A trip to Murchison Falls (and a lot of pictures of animals and waterfalls...).

Last weekend, I went on a three day trip with Red Chilli to Murchison Falls. Flanking the Victoria Nile, Murchison is about 300km northwest of Kampala and the national park is the largest protected area in Uganda, covering around 5000km sq. There were 7 of us on the trip, from various countries (UK, US, France and Argentina) and all either working or volunteering here.




Kurt, Leah, Douglas, Dev, Danni and Simon

Much of the first day was spent travelling but this gave me chance to see a bit more of the Ugandan countryside and we arrived at Murchison Falls by early afternoon. Before arriving at the camp, we took part in a guided walk around the top of the falls -

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spot the rainbow...

We stayed at the Red Chilli Rest Camp in safari tents:

View from our tent at sunrise

We shared the camp with a family of warthogs (hippos were also frequent visitors apparently) -

We were given strict instructions to leave any food or anything with a sweet scent (including cosmetics) at the bar and not in our tents to stop the warthogs from barging in! Despite following these instructions, the family did take quite an interest in mine and Dev's tent and one point we were cornered by the door by two warthogs, which was slightly unnerving... (Unnerving for us. A mildly hilarious photo opportunity for everyone else!).

On day two, we took a "ferry" across the Nile to the north bank:

and spent the morning on a 4 hour game drive:




Buffalo!

The Ugandan Kob

A lonely elephant enjoying the early morning

Jackson's hartebeest

A Rothschild giraffe

A herd of buffalo heading to the nearest watering hole....

....and we drove in their path!

View from our truck, with the Nile in the background

We were lucky to see seven lions, including four lion cubs. The lion cubs were tucking into a recently killed buffalo. You can't really see it on the photos but they all had bright red lips from the blood!

The male lions lie around chilling, whilst the females hunt!

Looking out for fresh buffalo.

In the afternoon we went on a four hour boat cruise along the Victoria Nile to the base of the Falls. Along the way we saw lots of hipps, elephants, crocodiles, birds and other wildlife:

Hippos!

An elephant enjoying a drink.

The elephant and the hippos!

A crocodile grinning.

On Sunday, on our way back to Kampala, we stopped off at the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary. In 1970, there were around 300 black rhinos and 120 white (called "white" because of their wide mouths - the name got slightly lost in translation!) rhinos in Uganda. By the early 1980s both had been poached to local extinction. The last white rhino was shot in Murchison Falls in 1982 and no black rhino has been observed in Uganda since 1983.

Founded in 1997, the Rhino Fund Uganda is an NGO dedicated to reintroducing the rhino back to the national parks of Uganda. The Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary is a 80km sq fenced enclosure and the only place in the country you can see rhinos. Initially countries such as Kenya and the US (Disneyland!) donated several white rhinos to the Uganda. There are now 15 white rhinos living in the sanctuary and once there are between 30 and 40 (it will take a while - the gestation period for rhinos is 16 months...) half of them will be reintroduced into the wild.

Before beginning our rhino tracking we received a safety talk. This went along the lines of; rhinos are quite blind but have excellent sight and sense of smell and they do occasionally charge tourists (they weigh up to three tonnes and can run up to 45km an hour....). We were told that, should a rhino charge us, we should climb the nearest tree (!) and, if there were no trees nearby (there really weren't many trees) we should hide behind the nearest bush (my preferred option...)

We walked for a short time and then saw one rhino dosing under a tree:

A bit further on, we were really lucky to see ten rhinos (including two babies):

After a bit of time, they started to stir and one of them stood up:

Shortly after this, the remaining nine all stood up at once. This is unusual as it was the middle of the day and generally at this time rhinos just sleep and graze. A few of us looked around for the closest bush! However, they were just a bit squashed, all trying to share the same shade and half of them walked over to another tree nearby. This was quite incredible to watch:

After lunch and a quick look at some of the other wildlife and animals in the sanctuary (my favourites are below) we headed back to Kampala.

An African starling.

An African Grace!