With
gorilla tourism waning, Murchison Falls National Park is emerging as a flagship
for Uganda’s tourism industry. Perhaps this interest will highlight the
reserve for what it is — an excellent wildlife destination with wide
appeal. Philip Briggs reports.
Murchison Falls National Park is Uganda’s largest
conservation area. Situated a day’s drive northwest of the capital
Kampala, it is also one of the country’s most alluring game reserves. It
is blessed with an extraordinary habitat diversity, some tremendous wildlife
viewing possibilities, and unexpectedly good tourist facilities.
Murchison Falls would be worth visiting merely for the spectacular waterfall
after which it is named, where the Victoria Nile is funnelled brutally through
a seven-metre wide gap in the Rift Valley escarpment. The launch trip to the
base of the falls also happens to be one of Africa’s most memorable game
viewing experiences and a relaxed meander down the world’s longest river.
The river is home to a profusion of hippos — I’ve counted more than
100 in a single bay — and to massive crocodiles that slither menacingly
from the bank to vanish below the surface of the water. Elephants regularly
come to drink at the river, while buffalo, Defassa waterbuck and olive baboon
haunt its banks. Lucky visitors may catch a flying glimpse of the beautiful
black-and-white colobus monkey.
The plains game in Murchison Falls
doesn’t compare to somewhere like the Serengeti, but the palm-dotted hills
to the north of the river offer rewarding game drives. The handsome Uganda kob
is common here, as is the diminutive oribi and doleful-looking Jackson’s
hartebeest. Large herds of buffalo are a feature of this borassus grassland,
which also supports 500 Rothschild’s giraffe and the bulk of the
reserve’s elephants. And it’s a good place to look for the localised
patas monkey, a largely terrestrial primate associated with dry savannah.
Lions, once threatened with local extinction, now number as many as 100.
Even the most aviphobic of souls will do a double-take when they encounter
their first shoebill. Placed in a monospecific genus, the shoebill is the
undoubted star of Murchison Falls’ checklist of more than 450 bird
species. It is a large, prehistoric-looking bird, slate-grey in colour and
sporting an outlandish bill fixed in a perpetual ‘Cheshire cat’
smirk.
The combination of singular appearance, localised distribution
and scarcity, not to say the inaccessibility of most of the papyrus swamps in
which it lives, has made the shoebill the ultimate ‘megatick’ for
many African birders. Nowhere is it so easily observed as in Murchison Falls
— on a recent visit, we counted five sightings on one boat trip and three
on another.
With more than 1,000 species recorded, Uganda ranks among
Africa’s top five countries in terms of avian diversity, a statistic which
tells only part of the story. Uganda is far smaller than any of the other
countries in the ‘top five’ (it covers less than half the area of
Kenya, the next largest), which means it is possible to visit a good selection
of the most important birding sites in the space of a normal holiday.
Murchison Falls National Park is of course one of these sites, but an even
greater magnet for birders is the Budongo Forest, a southern extension of the
national park which is passed through by all visitors driving up from Kampala.
Budongo is a good place to tick a wide selection of the (roughly) 150
‘West African’ forest birds that reach the eastern extent of their
range in Uganda. Furthermore, its estimated population of 900 chimpanzees is by
some way the largest in East Africa, and the attractive campsites that lie next
to the Kampala road run daily chimp tracking walks.
In the 1960’s
the river below the waterfall was renowned for superb line fishing. Tigerfish
were plentiful, as were massive Nile perch — the record catch, set in
1959, weighed in at 73kg. There are no longer facilities for fishermen at the
falls, but a recent pioneering trip by the South African company Wild Frontiers
suggests that, combined with the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria, Murchison
Falls holds much promise as a destination for anglers.
Steve Dunbar,
one of the most experienced members of the Wild Frontiers expedition, describes
it as “trailblazing stuff, not for the faint-hearted, when standing on the
rocks below the falls, reeling a leaping 25kg perch through madly rushing water
while the waterfall kicks up spray all around you”. The recent news that a
perch weighing 102kg was caught on a line a few kilometres downriver from the
falls should set the heart of any angler racing.
As a tourist
destination, Murchison Falls finds itself in a strange state of limbo.
Everything is in place for a tourist boom. Three top-notch game lodges have
opened since 1994 and there are regular flights from Kampala. The security
problems of the late 1980’s are a thing of the past. Recent years have
seen a marked increase in large mammal populations and facilities for
chimpanzee tracking lie within the park and on its borders.
In the
1960’s Murchison Falls was regarded as one of Africa’s finest
reserves and, despite the subsequent poaching of its elephant herds, it still
has much to offer tourists. Many African countries would love to have a reserve
of this quality, and you would certainly expect Murchison Falls to lie at the
heart of Uganda’s safari circuit. But it doesn’t, and the reason for
this is straightforward: Uganda’s tourist industry has developed largely
around mountain gorilla tracking, something that can only be done within Uganda
or in parts of Rwanda and the Congo that are most easily and safely
visited.
While it is indisputable that the mountain gorillas have done
a great deal to rehabilitate Uganda’s international image, it is also the
case that the limited availability of gorilla tracking permits has placed an
artificially low ceiling on tourism to the country. Worse still, the recent
instability in the border regions of Rwanda and the Congo has forced the
closure of their gorilla reserves. This has resulted in a sharp drop in the
number of available tracking permits and a decrease in tourist arrivals.
This is a great shame for Uganda, and for everybody who has invested time,
money and effort in the development of parks such as Murchison Falls, since
even without gorillas Uganda would rank as one of Africa’s most exciting
ecotourism destinations. This is especially true for those who’ve already
done a conventional safari elsewhere on the continent.
For those
tourists who can look beyond mountain gorillas — for birders, anglers and
natural history enthusiasts — there will probably never be a better time
to visit Uganda or to see Murchison Falls. After all, the crowds are bound to
find out about it eventually.
Philip Briggs has spent four years
travelling around Africa. He is the author of eight African guide books,
including Bradt’s Guide to Uganda.
Murchison
Factfile
Accommodation:
In recent years several
high quality safari lodges have opened in or near the national park and facing
onto the river. These include: Nile Safari Camp, a tented camp; Sambiya River
Lodge, a larger establishment; the tented Sambiya River Tented Camp; Sarova
Paraa Lodge, a hotel in the western region. Uganda National Parks operate
some basic self-catering bandas, and camping facilities are also provided.
Activities:
Visitors should take the launch trip
from Paraa to the Murchison Falls itself. It is operated by Uganda National
Parks and has a minimum charge of US$10 — depending on how many people go
on it. Game viewing is excellent from the river. Lodges also offer game
drives and there is a (seasonal) white water rafting / canoeing trip from
Masindi to Murchison Falls — a 5 day trip operated by Adrift.
Access:
There is an air strip at Paraa, visited by
charter flights from Entebbe. Most lodges are serviced this way. Murchison
Falls NP can be accessed by road, via Masindi and Butiaba. A more direct route
through the park is only suitable for reliable 4WD vehicles.
Background:
Because of its rich animal and vegetable
resources, the eastern part of the NP has been a popular habitat for man from
early times. The earliest artifacts found in the area date from the middle
stone age,when the banks of the Nile were peopled with small groups of hunters
and gatherers, who may also have done some fishing. Some rough pebble tools,
large flakes, some picks and a hand-axe have been found. New types of tool
appeared in later years.
Pottery fragments, ironware and iron slag
dating back as far as 2,000 years has been collected along the banks. The bulk,
though, date from the last 200 years. Related pottery types occur over most of
the sub-continent, although this is the most northerly occurence of this
archaeological complex yet discovered.
