Murchison Falls

We were finished with our research and presentations, so we headed to Murchison Falls National Park – our last hoorah with SIT before everyone left from Kampala. But, of course, Africa couldn’t let us go without one more adventure together!

We arrived to the park (according to Lonely Planet, the “best all-rounder” in the country) in a school bus that magically fit all 23 of us and our luggage. We hopped out of the bus and into a boat for a safari cruise.

Our little boat cruise was great - tons of hippos, the occasional crocodile, and distant elephants. We had our very own crate of Nile Special on board, too, drinking Nile on the Nile! It rained… maybe downpoured is a better word… for a while, but soon cleared up, and stayed clear for the rest of the ride. Thank God; it would have been a pity to miss the beautiful waterfall that gave the park its name!

We got back in the bus to go to the hotel afterwards. We were staying in some place outside the park, and we were in a hurry to get there before dark. Apparently there was an accident on one road, so we took an alternate route, which I guess was… shitty.

We got stuck in the mud in the park with our 2-wheel drive bus. The weight of all 23 of us and our luggage pretty much ensured that we wouldn’t be getting out any time soon, as did the wheels spinning deeper into a rut in the once dirt, now mud, road. So, William, our academic director, (what a fantastic guy!) said, “Girl power!” and suggested all the girls get out and push the bus. Which we did, barefoot in the mud. As he sat chuckling inside the bus.

Our efforts only succeeded in nearly tipping the bus over in a deeper rut on the side of the road. It was dusk by this point, and William insisted that we get back in the bus. We were a little skeptical – if we got inside, we were sure the bus would completely flip – but obeyed when he told us why he was so insistent. Lions, of course.

Recap: we’re stuck in the mud in the middle of a national park in Uganda; our bus is at a 30-degree angle with the ground, and lions are coming (they never actually came, by the way). And to make the situation better, we keep the engine on and running to “scare off the animals.” Even if someone did come to tow us out, we’d run out of gas before we could go anywhere.

Fortunately, William made some calls and found us a place to stay inside the park. A van came to rescue us at about, oh, 9:00? Not sure. But the only food we had gotten since breakfast – unless you count the Niles – was some cabbage and a piece of bread or two. Maybe a banana or hard-boiled egg. So, needless to say, we were all pretty hungry… and William said there was no food at this mysterious "student housing" where we were staying.

We got to the student housing, which wasn’t half bad if you avoided the latrine, and waited. William said he was going to get us food (and me a first aid kit because, of course, I had sliced my toe open trying to push the bus). But he didn’t, so we just went to bed.

Next morning, around nine: About an hour after we woke up, this monstrous tow truck thing showed up to take us to get food and our stranded bus. By the way, it had rained buckets all night, and we were terrified about finding the bus, and all our luggage, drowned and ruined. And according to the original plan, we were supposed to start a game drive at seven am.

We each got a juice box and one piece of chapatti for breakfast… chapatti has never tasted so good!... and headed down the muddy road. Our things weren’t destroyed, but the bus did smell like stale beer and rotten eggs, which was lovely. And it was covered in mud from the adventures the day before. But we were excited – we were going on a safari! Better late than never!

30 minutes after we began driving through the park, we left the park. We had seen one giraffe and maybe 3 buffalo. A warthog or two, perhaps. That was the end of our “game drive” because, according to William, the roads were going to get worse.

People were pretty upset. To say less than the least. But Rachel Gillete came to the rescue and got William to organize an evening game drive for a max of 12 people, for only $10 each.

We got a real safari truck and guide and everything, which made it better than our first game drive before we even began. But the drive itself didn't disappoint. Especially with the giraffes – they were everywhere! And little warthog families, and beautiful species of deer with twisty horns or straight horns or long, moose-like faces; all of it was incredible. We even got stopped by an angry elephant (though we couldn’t see him) who wouldn’t get out of the road when we were trying to leave the park!

Oh yeah, getting out of the park is another story. Apparently the park permits last exactly 24 hours, and ours had expired. We owed $300 more than we thought we had to pay. When we told them that we didn’t have the money and our director thought the permits were still valid, the park ranger got very defensive, accusing William of purposefully not coming with us because he knew this would happen.

So, after a lot of convincing on Rachel Gillette’s part, our knight in not-so-shining armor, William, came to get us out of our scrape. Actually, the whole rest of the group showed up in the van, like they were coming to bust us out… We were ready to run, too (maybe not me; I had fallen asleep in the safari truck). Lewie was suggesting that we all run into the park, find some lions and get eaten, so they’d be liable for the loss and feel really guilty. Later he revised that brilliant plan, saying that we just threaten to do that, to scare them into not making us pay. But eventually throwing ourselves to the lions was unnecessary. We got to leave the park, no fees required.


Success! And then to Kampala.