We almost immediately began to see hippos dotting the riverbank. During the day, they primarily sleep at the bottom of the river, rising periodically for air. Sometimes canoeists have the misfortune of being hit from below by these semi-conscious hippos, and their boats overturned. This is just one of many ways hippos kill so many people and are known as the most dangerous animal in Africa. They are incredibly territorial, and will fight to the death over their land and their females. This is reason number two they are so dangerous. And surprisingly, despite their massive size, they are incredibly fast runners. Reason three. Anyway, their skin is very sensitive to sunburn, so they wait until dark to exit the river and graze on land.
I had seen most of this wildlife already when I was on safari in Zimbabwe (not that I wasn’t terribly excited to see them again), but the one animal I came to see was the Nile crocodile. I was not disappointed. We saw them again and again either swimming or basking. You get a tingling down your spine when a crocodile disappears under the water’s surface without a trace—you never know how many are lurking down there. One animal must have been around 15 feet long. Stunning!!
Birds flew all along the side of the river. Particularly gorgeous were these tiny bee eaters, one of which I got a particularly good snapshot of. (Lorrie, these might make a great tattoo!) We also saw the most majestic eagles, one called the African fish eagle, which resembles a slightly more irritable version of a bald eagle.
The falls themselves were breathtaking. At the top of the falls the Nile is about 160 feet wide then it has to squeeze through a small 23 foot cleft where it drops for about 141 feet. You can imagine the power of the rush of water through the gap. We were only able to get so close because the rapids at the bottom can be quite dangerous. We hiked to the bottom of Murchison Falls on Sunday, but I’ll talk about that later.
The night back at the Red Chilli Rest Camp was similar to the night before—good food and better beer. They have a brand of beer brewed here called Bell that is particularly tasting. Word of the wise, though, if ever offered Nile beer, turn in down. You’ll thank me later. During dinner a baby bat fell from the rafted on top of Robert and bounced on the dinner table about 2 inches from Ben’s plate. It was so adorable, but I have little hope of its survival. I met a fantastically nice Dutch couple evening that I will be flying back on Friday. I’ll also be flying back with Robert. There are only so many flights from Kampala to Europe—you’re bound to run into someone you know.
Today I had a hilarious ride to Mulago. As I’ve mentioned before, traffic here is dreadful, and in some parts you have many lanes of traffic funneling into one tiny lane. We were coming onto a round about and a matatu (a large, aggresive minibus taxi) was trying to squeeze out a car that had the right of way. The driver of the car was not having it, and he rolled down the window and started beating the matatu with this large stick. George burst out laughing so hard I thought he was going to crash the car. He took me to Mulago where I went on a house visit in the 'slums'. It was quite heart wrenching, but I will save this story for later.
xoxo...G.
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