Queen Elizabeth Park

So the first stage of the jaunt towards Murchison Falls was a taxi ride to Kabale town and then a minibus to Mbarara (I know these place names mean nothing to other people, I just mention them as a note-to-self for the years to come when I look back on this trip). Just as the minibus leaves, a Western couple hop in, and when we arrive at Mbarara we get chatting to them (Matt and Harper from the States). Turns out they're heading in kind-of the same direction as us, and they also have a fairly loose, ill-defined plan. So we collectively decide to take a shared taxi on the next hop of the journey. Harper had been living for the past year in the Congo, and was an impressively seasoned negotiator, and so she managed to haggle a really cheap price between all us. After the hustle and bustle of a packed minibus, which stops every 4 minutes to let someone off or someone on (or to let the driver do his wife’s food shopping), the taxi was shear luxury and we seemed to be just flying along. We kinda decide on where exactly we want to go as we're driving along and finalise on trying to get to see Queen Elizabeth National Park.

The national parks are actually quite tricky to get into if you don't have your own transport. Generally the park gates are a good few kilometers from the nearest town, and then accommodation within the park (if there is any) can be many more kilometers further. But the fact that we now had our own taxi, as opposed to public transport, gave us the freedom to move about easily.

As you drive towards Queen Elizabeth you actually pass through a large part of it on the main road, and we pass a number of baboons nonchalantly crossing the road. A little further on we spot a herd of elephants not too far away, and naturally enough we excitedly get the taxi driver to stop so we can get a good look. As we're taking photos I turn around and on the other side of the road are two more elephants, only much closer. It was all a little surreal (in a very cool way, of course) just driving along a main road and stopping to look at wild elephants grazing by the roadside (a couple of weeks later an entire herd of elephants just happen to cross the road again as we’re driving to Victoria Falls).

So a bit further on we arrive at the gates of the park and persuade our driver to take us the 24km into the park itself to the Mweya Pennisula where a cluster of accommodation options are located. But when we arrive, it turns out all the accommodation is full, including the $300-a-night luxury lodge. It turns out the only other place that might have space is back outside the park gates past a nearby village. We have no option but to drive all the way back and try and find this place, so our taxi driver agrees to bring us. We get a bit worried as we get close, as the nearby village we pass through is extremely desolate and the road is nearly impassable. But when we find it we see that it's actually a nice new place with the accommodation being luxury safari tents. Naturally enough we cheer up, especially when they say they have tents available. The shock hits though when we hear the price - $100 per person per night. Now these are 'luxury' tents, meaning that they are really big, walk-around tents with lovely comfortable beds with mosquito nets and an ensuite toilet that even had a bath - but it's still a tent! Harper takes over the negotiating but even her protracted attempts only manage to get the guys down to $50 per person per night, and all four of us have to share a single tent (they were plenty big enough even with the extra beds) – so the guys were still getting their $200 per tent per night. You have to understand of course that up until this point we're paying $10-$20 a night for nice ensuite rooms, so it's all a bit galling to say the least, but we have no option now as its dark and we’re all pretty tired. Also our poor taxi driver needs to get home, and we'd dragged him all over the place (a lot of it on atrocious roads).

Early the next morning we get another taxi back to the Mweya Pennisula and try to get aboard the river safari. We have to wait to see if there is room, but luckily two people don’t show up and we get their places on the boat. The trip was superb, on a lovely boat just cruising along the river passing hundreds of hippos. The park ranger guy was constantly pointing out different birds along the way and giving us an interesting running commentary on the whole area. We also spotted elephants, buffalo, fish eagles, pelicans, storks and loads of pied kingfishers.

After the boat trip the same ranger guy took just the four of us on a 1.5-hour walking safari. We didn’t get to see much, but it was nice to walk in the bush, although at one point we passed a big bush and heard a loud rustle. The ranger stood back and cocked his rifle, which naturally got us all very excited (with myself and Matt eagerly edging closer to see what the beastie might be), but it turned out to be just a monitor lizard foraging, something both myself and Sarah had seen lots of before in Asia.

There’s really only one other main activity in Queen Elizabeth Park, a gorge walk, but it would have meant staying another night, which wasn’t really an option. So instead we decided to share a taxi again and continue on up towards Murchison together. So after a lovely late lunch at the luxury lodge we headed off again.