Murchison Falls National Park.

After we left the ferry it was a short drive to our campsite at the Murchison River Lodge where again we bumped into our new German friends the Hartmann family.

We decided to spend three nights here so that we could go on a boat ride up the river to see the Murchison Falls from the bottom. However Pauline hadn’t been feeling well so our first day was spent with Pauline in bed all day feeling lousy and to make matters worse it was stinking hot and humid. I had a good chat to manager Boris who runs the lodge with his wife and discovered that he had never done something like this before but had managed a bank back in the Netherlands so how much different could it be! Well so far they are doing a fantastic job of it and the staff at the lodge were some of the friendliest we had come across. The lodge had a refreshingly cool swimming pool which made the hot days somewhat more bearable not to mention the Gin and tonics at the bar! The restaurant/bar was beautiful looking out on the Murchison River and surrounded by some stunning sculptures.

Pauline was a little better the next day so we went on the boat trip which was just stunning being a 17 kilometre ride up river with an incredible amount of different birds, huge Nile Crocodiles and animals such as hippo, elephants and water buck along the banks of the river. We had not seen so many Pied Kingfishers anywhere else in Africa.

After we returned it was already very hot so I suggested to Pauline that we now drive to the top of the falls to get a different perspective and also to stay a little longer in the car aircon and out of the heat. The view from the top was even more spectacular than the bottom and the spray from the falls gave off an evaporative cooling effect so we lingered a bit longer to make the most of it.

The Murchison River Lodge was an excellent place to be sick and relax a bit but it was time to head further south to the Kibale National Park to do some Chimpanzee tracking and hopefully find some cooler weather!