We awoke at 6:30 to begin our day with a boat cruise up the Nile to Murchison Falls.
We ate breakfast in the lodge when one of the girls that travelled to the rhino sanctuary with us (but in a different group) the day before walked over. She was one of the people wearing open toe shoes, shorts and a tank top.
“Do any of you have a scalpel or a very sharp knife?” She asked.
“We’re all doctors” one of the girls said. “Whats the problem?”
The girl lifted her foot. “I wore sandals during the rhino tour yesterday. A bug burrowed under my nail and layed eggs.” She pointed at a guy standing on the other side of the room. “That guy is also a doctor and he said it’s a jigger. He said we need to get it out because it can cause disease.”
“I have a leatherman?” Dave said. He pulled it out an opened the knife.
The doctor guy walked over.
The girl with the jigger showed it to him. “Will this work?”
“It’ll have to.” He said.
The British doctor looked at the group. “Does anyone have any antibiotic cream?”
Terri handed him a Purell hand sanitizer.
“I also have antibiotic cream and band aids.” I said. “Do you want them?”
The British doctor nodded.
I walked to my tent and when I came back the girl was seated on a picnic table and the British doctor was about to dig in.
“It’s burrowed pretty deep.” He said. “I’ll need to cut the nail away so I can get the head and the eggs out. It’s going to hurt but you need to get it out.”
The girl grimaced and looked away. I also grimaced and walked away happy I wasn’t a doctor at that point.
We watched from afar as the poor girl writhed in pain while the doctor dug under her nail with a relatively crude knife.
After a half hour the doctor walked over. He gave Dave his knife.
“Did you get it all out?” Dave asked.
“Hard to say.” The British doctor said. “We got the body and most of the eggs but I can’t tell if we got the head out.”
The girl limped over with her newly bandaged foot.
“That’ll do for now.” She said. “I guess its good I’m going home in 2 weeks.”
Indeed.
That’s why you don’t wear shorts or open toe shoes in the bush. Lesson learned.
We left for our boat cruise down the Nile. It was really incredible and we saw a slew of animals hanging out on the river: hippos, crocs, elephants, various birds, snakes, buffaloes, monitor lizards…etcetera…pictures are attached.
We also saw the exact spot where Ernest Hemingway crashed his plane in 1954. I was super excited to see the spot because I’d read about it quite a bit (I’m an Ernest Hemingway fan).
We finally reached the falls and I really can’t emphasize the raw power coursing through that chasm. The VAST Nile river was squeezed into a space of 7 meters in this gorge. The tour guide said that 300 square meters of water passed through the gorge every second. It’s hard to undertstand just how much water that is. The force was so severe that it killed anything that went through it – even fish. There was an area known as croc valley near the base of the falls – our guide explained to us that it was a popular spot because the crocs hung out and waited for mashed fish to float to them. It’s much easier than hunting.
We got off the boat and began our hike towards Murchison Falls. Halfway along our trip one of the people in our group fell ill. She didn’t appear to be the most physically fit person I’d ever come across and she looked seriously dehydrated. We had to wait 45 minutes while she drank and recuperated. It was okay though because I got to take a lot of great pictures of the falls.
When we finally got to the falls the ground literally shook from the vibrations of the water coursing through. I’ve never seen something so powerful in nature. I’ve been to Niagara Falls but Murchison is the emobodiement of the power of water and mother nature. The water was churned so much that it literally became frothy and filmy after making it to the bottom. Awesome and scary at the same time.
We came back to the Red Chili lodge (that’s the name of our lodge, I forgot to mention) and ate lunch. One of the other guests left her plastic-wrapped sandwich on the table and when she left to buy a coke a warthog jumped up, grabbed the sandwich and ate it – plastic and all!
Afterwards we took a “ferry” (umm, yeah scary) across to the northern side of the Nile. Five years ago if you took a ferry across the Nile you’d probably have been attacked by the LRA (Lords Resistance Army). Its safe now, but if you flip through a guide book that’s even 2 or 3 years old you’ll read how tourists are heavily advised against going north of the Nile. Anyways…its safe now, but interesting to note how drastically things have changed in a couple of years.
We crossed the Nile and Sam told us to make sure we had NO food items in the van. He said that as soon as we crossed the van would be infiltrated by baboons and if they smelled food they’d go as far as entering the van and taking it out.
We had no baboon problems.
We started out safari, sticking our heads out the top of the converted van. It was absolutely incredible – we traversed across the savannah and looked at fields of rolling grass, baobub trees and blue skies stretching into eternity. It was just like I imagined. I had to pinch myself to remember it was real – I was flying through the African countryside looking at lions, elephants, giraffes, monkeys, baboons, Jackson wildebeests, grey herons, buffaloes and every other animal you could imagine.
We were VERY lucky to see lions – they are solitary animals that don’t like attention or commotion. Not only did we see a lioness, but we saw her with her cubs. It was really incredible.
We spent the next 4 hours flying through the bush looking at animals I’d only seen in zoos, movies and post cards.
At one point Sam yelled, “okay, we need to leave now!”
He told us the last ferry back left at 7:00. It was 6:15.
“What if we miss that ferry?”
“We don’t.”
Gulp.
Sam RACED through the countryside, flying through the complicated network of paths weaving through the volley of shoulder high grass. The sun was setting in the background and everyone else sat in the van, but I stood up and tried to soak it all in. I put the camera down. I stopped talking and I focused on absorption.
I looked at hilltops in the distance and the indigenous trees sprouting from the ground. I saw giraffes and buffaloes lined against the setting sun. I felt the warm air, filled with dust breezing through my hair. And I knew the images I burned into my brain would stay with me forever. That doesn’t happen often in life.
We got to the ferry with four minutes to spare. The sun had set and the bright moon hung high in the sky. The Nile flowed silently and powerfully past us in the dark. We boarded the ferry.
Sam was yelling at one of the ferry operators.
“Whats the matter?” Dave asked.
“One of the vans didn’t make it back in time.” Sam said. “The ferry operator wont wait.”
They waited till 7:04 and we swept back across the Nile. When we were half way we saw a van appear out of the darkness. We kept moving forward and left the van and all its passengers on the north side of the Nile.
“What happens to them?” I asked Sam.
“I don’t know.” He said. “They sleep in their van.”
I felt terrible for those poor people.
We had a beer. We ate. We talked about the incredible experiences we had that day and we all fell asleep by 9:00.
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