Despite my inability to pay $80 each way to get in an out of the park, I managed to make it to my Merchison Falls cruise. I woke up early to make it to the gates before they opened at 7am. I think it was the first time anything has ever happened early in Africa, but I arrived at 2 minutes to 7 and all of the cars had already been let in. Things didn't look good for catching another tourist car anytime soon, but I waited and hoped for the best.
After about 10 minutes, two beer trucks rode in; I found my ride.
So there we were: Me, Silver, Julius, Balu (the dashboard bear I named), a truck full of beer, and about 200 swarming biting flies, bouncing over the roads past monkeys and gazelles to the Nile River.
I made it to my destination, but was too late for the morning cruise so I had to wait until 2:30. I managed to get a free ride on the ferry to the other side of the river and had lunch of chicken and chapatti, with a local I met that worked for a charity/tour company, next to a group of warthogs.
Standing on the boat amoung the frenzy of clicking cameras as we floated down the river, I have never felt like such a tourist in my life. I generally try to avoid those types of tours, but I did get to see a lot of hippos and crocadiles very close-up, which I didn't really see on the Serengeti. We didn't get as close as I expected, but the falls themselves were really cool: it was this powerful flow of water that wound around this narrow passageway of rocks.
On our way back to shore, I got to work. I think there were about 50 people on the boat and I talked to at least 40 of them, including the entire crew. Not one person was leaving the park that night, things didn't look good.
The captain told me he would let me know if he could find any workers leaving the park and told me about a cheap campsite I could stay at, but I had left all of my bags at Boomu. After waiting at the entrance to the Nile for about 15 minutes, I realized that, bag or not, I was sleeping in the park. A Merchison Park car came to pick up the ranger and offerred to drive me to the campsite. I learned that the driver, Tom, was actually the manager of the park. I think he was a bit worried about me so he gave me his card before he dropped me off and told me to call him if I had problems getting out in the morning.
I was there for about 10 minutes, when I ran into these two Germans who looked a bit lost. Someone had told them that they could camp for free at the top of the falls, so they hadn't brought enough money for accomodation. I told them I could pay for their accomodation if they would drive me out of the park in the morning. The only problem was that they were planning on doing a game drive in the morning, so wouldn't be leaving the park until around noon the next day. My park ticket was for 24 hours, so I would need to pay another 90,000 Ush if I left after 7:30 am. When I finally got service, I managed to get a hold of Tom. He said it was no problem and to just call him at the gate the next day.
I had to wake up with the Germans and go to the game drive launch area to wait for them to finish. I wanted to get breakfast, but the only place was this really fancy hotel with a 45,000 Ush buffet. I talked to the hotel manager and asked if there was anything else I could get, since that was really expensive. She told the restaurant manager that I would just be having a light breakfast and gave me the buffet for 12,000 Ush.
I spent the morning napping by the pool, watching the lizards crawl by, and listening to economics lectures (I left that part out when the Germans asked me what I had done all day). Then at 11am, we got in the car and headed for the gate.
We arrived at the gate and, as expected, the ranger told me that I would need to pay for another day at the park. My phone was dead so we used his phone to call Tom and he waved us through. I was actually quite shocked that I managed that whole thing with only a few minor speed bumps.
On the way home, one of the tires literally blew up. I have never seen a flat like that in my life. About a quarter of the tire was melted and ripped off. About 7 locals stopped to help and basically changed the tire for us.
By nightfall, I was back with my friends at Backpackers in Kampala. I was determined to get out for good the next day.
No comments:
Post a Comment