Our first African Christmas

31st December  -
We have just seen off our son Hamish and his partner Morven after a really magical Christmas, mainly due to just having Hamish and Morven with us and helped by having  a wonderful safari to Murchison National Park in the north of Uganda.
We met HandM at the Shell Garage up the road from our house on 22nd December as they were coming from Jinja just an hour and a half east of Kampala. They had set out for Africa from Aberdeen on 2nd December and had spent some time travelling around in Kenya with our niece who is based in Nairobi. It was great to have them staying with us in Kampala for two nights before we set off on our safari very early on Christmas Eve. We were picked up by our driver Emmy (Emanuel), who was excellent, and set off north to Murchison. The north is much less populated than the west and on Christmas Eve the roads west were very congested with people going back to their villages for Christmas. The road north was surprisingly quiet although we passed the scene of 4 or 5 accidents. 

The first three hours to Masindi was on good roads and then we had two and a half hours of “African Massage” on very rough unsurfaced roads with lots of potholes.

Just before Masindi we stopped at the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary and were very lucky to get very close to the White Rhinos because it had been raining and was still quite overcast, so they were feeding in the open. We travelled on to stop for lunch at a very nice hotel in Masindi.
 

After lunch we entered Murchison Falls National Park and travelled up to the banks of the Nile. We stayed at the Nile Safari Lodge west of Paraa which had very good accommodation and great food.

Each room/tent was on its own with a verandah overlooking the River Nile with hippos in abundance.
On  Christmas Day we went for a game drive in the north side of the Nile. We crossed the Nile at Paraa on the ten-car ferry and were joined by a park ranger who could guide us to the  likely places to see the animals. 

We saw lions, giraffes, elephants, buffalo, warthogs, Ugandan kobs, hartebeest, and lots of amazing birds, and Morven used her fancy new camera to take lots of photos. 

 

Northern Carmine Bee-Eater (above not below)

In the afternoon we had a drive to the top of the Murchison Falls a truly awesome sight as all the water of the 50 metre wide Victoria Nile is forced through a 6 metre cleft to fall 43 metres.

Unexpectedly we had a wet Christmas day but no snow! This created tricky driving conditions and  some vehicles could not cope with the muddy inclines.

 
On the morning of Boxing Day we went on a boat trip up the Nile to the foot of Murchison Falls to view from another angle. There was lots of wildlife to see – plenty of hippos, and crocodiles waiting at the foot of the falls for anything pounded unconscious on the trip through the falls.

 

 
 

In the afternoon another game drive on the north side revealed enormous numbers of hartebeest and three hunting lions.

 
 












On Sunday 27th  we departed before sunrise to travel home. However we still had one more adventure – chimp tracking in the Budongo Forest. The trek can be as short as 2 or 3 hours but nobody told the chimps we were coming and  they decided to have an “away day” outside the forest where they normally stay. 

However our guide,  armed with his machete,  led us out into the wilderness and tracked down the  chimps. 


We returned to base four and a half hours later tired but very happy with  our encounter.

 

The whole four days were really great and it was just nice to be together for Christmas. We had two more days in Kampala, exploring the local market, the craft village and central Kampala which is very busy and noisy. (We achieved another first during this period. When stopped at the junction at Garden City we have always declined to buy from the many vendors who approach the car. However when approached by one selling Scrabble Rhona could not resist.  In her best bartering mode and aided by the changing traffic lights she acquired Scrabble for 15,000 shillings)
Yesterday we spent the day in Entebbe before Hamish and Morven left on a late flight back to the UK via Amsterdam. Entebbe was incredibly quiet. We went for lunch to one of the big resort hotels which was deserted, went swimming in another big hotel which was also full of staff but no customers and then Bobby and I were the only guests in a small hotel (Sophie’s Motel) we found which is ideal (cheap, clean and friendly) for an overnight stay to avoid driving back to Kampala at night.