Paraa

Paraa means place of the hippos in the local Ugandan language, Luo, near Murchison Falls. It's pretty accurate, given the amount of hippos that we saw! We stayed in Entebbe for a day before heading to Kampala for our first excursion of the trip. We left Kampala around 8:30 in the morning heading for Murchison Falls National Park, which is northwest of the city. We have seen little of Kampala, but have driven through it, and don't really want to spend too much time there. It is a huge, sprawling city mixed with very poor people and booming industries. The traffic is horrendous, even driving through at 6 in the morning we sat in traffic jams, and pollution is almost overwhelming. We were driven to Kampala from Entebbe by Frank, the owner of the hostel that we stayed in, and had a very interesting drive. He must be one of only a handful of Buddhist Ugandans, given that an overwhelming number of the population is Christian, and he is happy to spread his beliefs. And he is one of the happiest, most enthusiastic people I have ever met. As he was talking to us, he got so excited, nearly screaming, and I thought his eyes would pop out of his head :)

The drive to Murchison Falls was fine, but it took a very long time - we didn't arrive until 5pm - and stopped for lunch in Masindi at a terrible place called "Traveler's Corner." It's where all of the tours stop along the drive I think. The roads from Kampala to Masindi were paved, but from Masindi to Murchison Falls it was a dirt road full of pot holes, so you can imagine that it was a very bumpy ride in a small van that seats 8. The countryside of Uganda is so beautiful - very lush and filled with green vegetation and the dirt is so red. We were able to see a lot of villages and small communities along the road, which were a huge contrast to Kampala. There are lots of thatched huts and very simple brick and concrete small buildings where people live and sell various things - and there are TONS of buildings that sell the sim cards and more minutes for cell phones. I think that everyone in this country has a cell phone - it's amazing.

My favorite thing about driving here is watching the people's reaction to the cars passing by - especially cars with Mzungus in them - Mzungu is the Swahili term for white people. When cars pass by, everyone turns their head to look at the car - and the children all wave and shout at the cars. They are the cutest kids!

Finally we arrived at the camp where we stayed for 3 nights in Murchison Falls, and it is right on a hill overlooking the Nile River. The camp was pretty nice, we thought, and we stayed in safari tents. There were probably 10 or 15 tents set up and a big thatched hut overlooking the river where people ate and where they cooked food and served lots of beer! There were warthogs everywhere wandering through the camp eating grass and sleeping, as if they were pets. And at night hippos walk around the camp munching on the grass - hippos bounce in the water all day and walk around eating at night on land. We didn't see any hippos, but I certainly wasn't going to stick my head outside of our tent at night to see if there were hippos there! They are HUGE and their teeth are sharp and about 3-4 inches long. Not something you want to encounter on your walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night. We relaxed the first night and met some of the other people traveling through Murchison Falls National Park. I love meeting other people traveling - so many people have interesting lives and stories, and lots of good recommendations for other places that we'll be going.

The next morning we woke up at 5:30 to get ready for our game drive through the Park, which started very early because that's when the animals are most active. After a very precarious ferry crossing to the other side of the Nile, we piled in our little van with the 7 other people in our group, our driver, and a park guide, and started driving through the park. Within a few minutes, we saw hippos walking around, and elephants eating leaves! The Park is very large and has lots of different landscapes - we started in a jungle area, with lots of green trees, and we thought how are we going to see the animals?! but soon we drove through more savannah-like areas where it was much easier to spot them - and it wasn't too difficult anyways because there were animals everywhere. I thought we'd see some, drive for 30 minutes, then see some more, then drive another 45 minutes, then spot another animal. But here, the animals were everywhere that you looked. We saw elephants, African buffaloes, Antelope, Kob, Bushbacks - tons of deer-like animals everywhere, warthogs, beautiful colorful birds, and giraffes. Wow, the giraffes. They were everywhere, traveling in packs. At one point we drove along part of the road and ahead of us were the silhouettes of probably 50 giraffes, just wandering along. They're such strange looking creatures - one was bent down awkwardly trying to drink water and it was so funny to see. Our guide let us get out to take some pictures with the giraffes in the background. We also stopped at a small water hole to see the groups of hippos floating around with just their eyes and ears out of the water, watching us. Their ears swirl around out of the water, and every once in a while one of the hippos would stand up and grunt, pushing another out of the way.

The top of our van popped up leaving a space of about 2 feet so that we could stand up and stick our heads out of the van to see the animals better. It was such a funny thing to see these little vans driving around with people's heads stuck out of the top. There weren't many vans driving through the park - maybe 6 or 7 of them - so it seemed as if the Park was all ours. Our guide, Charles, was super knowledgeable about the animals and was so great about explaining things to us. He couldn't have been nicer. Interesting is that he was toting a machine gun with him around the Park - all of the guides and rangers in the Parks carry the machine guns, in case they come across poachers, and also if an animal starts charging, they can fire them into the sky to scare the animals away.

After 4 hours of driving around seeing the animals, we headed back across the Nile to camp for lunch and a quick nap before our afternoon cruise along the Nile up to Murchison Waterfalls. We cruised along in a boat with 2 levels and we got stuck on top because our group was a bit late. It was great for seeing the scenery and all the wildlife, but it was soo hot! The Equator passes through Uganda, just south of Kampala, so it is really hot here and the sun is very intense. So that 4 hour Nile cruise was not so good for our Mzungu skin :) Thank goodness for the sunscreen. Cruising long the river was great - so beautiful and we saw tons of schools of hippos floating around. It's neat to see them from above, and amazing that they can just float there with how big they are. Apparently hippos can't swim, they just float around and when they go under water, they just bounce along the bottom. We had a guide named David for the cruise, who again was very knowledgeable and so friendly, with a huge smile and was laughing all the time. The guide who was telling the people on the lower level of the boat about everything was wearing a holographic Obama belt buckle, haha. Africans love Obama - but David was telling us that he is less popular now and probably half of Ugandans actually prefer Bush to Obama. Very interesting to us.

Back to the cruise - we came upon a group/pack/school (I don't know the correct terms, ha) of elephants down at the river drinking, and one of them had no trunk! David told us it most likely lost its trunk when it was very young, and so it grew up adapting to life without a trunk. It was pretty sad to see, but the elephant was very big so apparently it was just fine. The waterfall at the end of the cruise was beautiful - it is one of the most powerful waterfalls on the Nile - and we couldn't get too close to it because the current was so strong. There were Nile crocodiles not too far away from the falls, waiting for the dead fish to come over the falls so they could have dinner! The Nile is a very big river, and quite deep in parts. It originates here in Uganda, in Jinja where we are going whitewater rafting, and is called the 'White Nile' in Uganda because of all the waterfalls - as it flows through other countries it has other names - Blue Nile, Victoria Nile, Albert Nile.

We had a good night's sleep after such an adventurous day - and then woke up the next day to head to the Jiwa Rhino Sanctuary, south of Murchison Falls National Park. Back into the little van, back along the bumpy dirt roads, but this time with a different group. The rhino sanctuary was amazing - we got to walk to the rhinos, rather than just viewing them from a car. Rhinos were hunted to extinction in Uganda in the civil wars of the 1970's and the last rhino seen in Uganda was in 1983. So the Rhino Fund set up this sanctuary in order to educate Ugandans about rhinos, and to ultimately bring them back into the wild. There are 2 white rhinos at the Entebbe Wildlife Center, which we saw while we were there, and there are 9 wild white rhinos at the Rhino Sanctuary, and that is it for rhinos in Uganda. It's amazing that they were literally poached to extinction. Once at the sanctuary, we met our guide - again toting a machine gun and looking very much like a soldier, but instead a park ranger - and we drove out to where some of the rhinos were. We then hopped out of the van and walked a few minutes until we arrived at the first little group of rhinos. There were 3 of them napping under a tree, literally 50 feet away from us, a little family with a baby rhino, named Augusta. We were amazed when they got up and moved around - our guide said we were so lucky because normally they just lay there and people don't get to see them moving - they sleep all day when it is hot and move around at night, sometimes 20 km a night! After watching them a while, we walked another few minutes to the other rhinos in the area - a mother and baby rhino - and she was grazing, so again we got to see them awake and active and not just sleeping. They are amazing, and it was a bit scary to be so close to them, but apparently they've never been aggressive to people. Nonetheless, we made sure to scout out trees that we could climb if one of them started to charge.

So Ryan and I have seen 7 out of only 11 rhinos in all of Uganda! The Rhino Fund hopes to increase the number greatly in the next few years, and eventually introduce the rhinos into the national parks where they will no longer be monitored. One of the baby rhinos born last year is named Obama - his mother is a rhino from America, donated by Disney, and his father is a rhino from Kenya. Like I said - Obama is quite popular here - if not for his politics, for his heritage.

After lunch at the rhino sanctuary, we headed back to Kampala for a night of rest before heading to Jinja for whitewater rafting the Nile. I can't believe that we've been here only a few days - it feels like we've been here for weeks! Already I love it here - Uganda is a beautiful country, the people are so friendly - everyone greets you with "Hello, how are you?" and it is genuine interest - and I will be sad to leave after only a week and a half.