Cruising the Delta of Murchison Falls National Park
We arrive at the river a little after six-thirty in the morning, a slow drifting steam floats above the swirling currents of the Nile as it flows downstream past the ferry crossing at Paraa. Our guide met us beneath the acacia tree in the parking area and welcomed us down onto the jetty and into our waiting boat. The air was cool and it felt really beautiful to enjoy the coolness of morning before the sun warmed up the air as we pushed off from the jetty a few minutes before seven and the skipper angled his craft downstream toward the delta. This was it, I have lived in Uganda a good number of years now and been in Murchison Falls National Park several times to enjoy the waterfall cruise and even the walk up to the Top of the Falls, but I had never taken the opportunity of joining a boat cruise down to the delta, where the Victoria Nile empties itself into Lake Albert before continuing its 6000 km journey northwards to the sea.
Deo, our guide stood up at the front of the boat and his colleague and skipper cut the engine while he introduced himself and we received a short briefing on the trip. The silence was golden. Magical morning light in pale pastels warmed slowly as the sun rose silently out of the steaming river behind us. From the bank we could hear the raucous angry shout of baboons as they woke and started their daily trek, hippos languished lazily in slow-moving eddies along the bank, lazily flicking their stubby tails and grunting sleepily to one another, as if to warn their downstream neighbors of the approaching invaders.
After a moment to enjoy the early morning silence and the perfect colours of a Nile River sunrise, Tabu, the skipper, started the engine and we idled slowly and gently downstream, following the contours of the north bank and scanning the shore for any sign of wildlife down at the river at this most perfect time of day. Pied Kingfishers were already flying busily along the banks, swooping up to hover above the swirling waters and every now and then dive-bombing down into the stream before bobbing up, shaking their heads and flying off to start their fishing run again. Black and white Colobus sprawled lazily across some branches of an acacia tree overhanging the water, their long bright bottlebrush tails glowing in the early sunlight; elegant egrets standing silently on slender legs peering into the water along the grassy banks while a group of heavy Cape Buffalo bulls stare suspiciously at us as we were swept downstream with the current.
Waterbuck and warthog were also out early as we enter a hidden channel through one of the islands. A herd of female waterbuck and their young were leaping across the shallow channel in a cascading rush of hooves and wet hair before running a short distance ahead of the boat to stop and stare back at us with large wet-brown eyes over shiny heart-shaped noses. Herons and hippos waded through the shallows that fringed the channel and when Tabu cut the engine from time to time to drift quietly with the current, it really felt as if time had stood still. Our journey continued down and beyond the flat grassy islands that teased us with glimpses of grey and the sudden excitement of seeing that so rare and peculiar bird the Shoebill, only to realise that the grey was the grey on the shoulders of beautifully long Goliath Herons as they stood poised in the reeds vigilantly scanning the ripples and eddies for any unsuspecting something to snack on. Below these grassy reed-fringed islands the boat took us down long curving avenues of papyrus, their slender stalks swaying together in the wake of the boat and Papyrus Gonolek, chuckling and hooting at us from deep inside the Papyrus stands. A massive crocodile bank, not a massive bank at all really, just massive Nile crocodile, smiling brutishly and emotionless at us as our boat turns silently on the current drifting quietly past them so as not to disturb these archaic leviathans.
Through these swaying papyrus islands, we continue to where the papyrus islands separate and subdivide into a myriad of small and smaller channels, but not before idling easily through what appeared to be the middle of the most enormous school of hippo– feeling the trepidation of being within what feels like only a very few metres of that animal often quoted as being the biggest killer in Africa! It does seem hard to believe when you look at their mouse round ears twiddling round in rapid little circles as they breach alongside the boat and breathe easily and deeply through their unusually shaped nostrils. They seem so placid, so social, so very interested in our passing, other passengers and I alike, holding our breath almost as we cruise gently past their collective sleeping spot. Into the tiny channels now and we understand that here the delta is reaching its widest point and although still following the northern shoreline we round a bend where suddenly the twisting channel opens up onto expansive, wide-open lily flats on the verge of Lake Albert.
Fishermen from villages across the lake tend to their nets and draw hard on their paper rolled cigarettes, huddled in small groups under the shade of small papyrus islands. Next to the fisherman, egrets and pelicans and storks and gulls are all busy tapping into the richness of the delta. Gulls bobbing in small disorganised flocks of white and black with streaks of red and yellow in amongst the white, the pelicans, so poised on the water, turning and paddling so easily in their fishing spots – dipping in and dipping out in fluid smooth movements of their long beaks. The egrets looking jealously from the shallows as they wait in ambush for fish, frogs, bugs – you know, egret stuff.
We nose forward slowly across these lily flats following one of the main channels that empty into Lake Albert. About one kilometre offshore the skipper guns the engine up to cruising speed and we are seemingly flying across the millpond mirage surface of Lake Albert. We cruise a good two kilometres out into the middle of the lake before Tabu slows the engine and turns off. Through the misty haze across the lake surface villages and villagers can be seen on the shore, conical grass huts in small clusters, spaced out along the shoreline with their landing areas lined with canoes and brightly colored shirts and jerrycans. Children and dogs and a flight of snow-white birds winging along the shoreline, and all in front of the looming mountains of Congo folding out behind and beyond the villages.
The middle of Lake Albert…or that part in the middle where we now find ourselves is surreal. I can imagine a very different Lake Albert on a windy day with its reputation for sinking boats and vicious whipping storms that blow across the massive sheet of water from the Blue Mountains in Congo, but today it is still. Mirror smooth, the lake stretches away to the south in a curving bent image where the horizon melts into a hazy blue-grey mirage of togetherness, a union of water and sky broken only by black dots in the distance, moving so slowly within the mirage that they almost seem to be standing still. Without a word we sit and contemplate the scenery before us. In the silence and the stillness of the lake we have found a timelessness; a sense of being so far away and out of everything. No engine noises, no pedestrians, no aircraft high above us – nothing. Everything is natural and plain and perfect – birds, hippos, fishermen…and tranquillity.
The boat engines sudden guttural sputter broke me away from my reflection, and the boat turned in a long sweeping turn as we pick up speed and make our way back toward the shoreline, searching for the hidden channel that had emptied us out onto the lake. Tabu finds the entrance to the channel and we forge our way back into and against the current. The sun is high now and once over the shallow delta shelf, the breeze as we pick up the speed we need to take us back is welcome – a cool drink, amazing views, and some of my favourite people on board the boat with me. It truly does feel special to have had a glimpse into the beauty, the natural richness and the absolute natural perfection of this most very special and unique wilderness area in Uganda.
For information on Boat Safaris at Murchison Falls,
Please contact:
Murchison Falls Boats
Mobile: +256 773 897275 / +256 702 152928
Email: murchisonboats@wildfrontiers.co.ug
