March 26, 2013 - Paraa

During our travels to Murchison Falls National Park, the goal "location" for starting and ending our game drives, as well as starting and ending our river safari, is a town called Paraa. It does appear on some maps of Uganda, surprisingly. From what I could tell, the "town" of Paraa essentially is composed of two small ranger stations (one on each side of the Nile) and the ferry that moves passengers and vehicles across to the other side of the Nile once an hour. So that means, the town is composed of two buildings and one boat. I guess its significance is that is the only location where someone can cross the Nile within Murchison Falls National Park. They do have these enormous, spinning globes on either side of the ferry sites, which make for fun pictures. =)

After our "visit" to Paraa on Monday morning, we headed out for our final game drive en route back to Kampala. The scenery was beautiful, as usual, with frequent change in topography from forest to prairie to swamp land. We saw very similar animals as on our previous game drive, although the trip started out with very close viewing of a group of baboons. They are funny creatures, who seem to be very intent on keeping on another clean...

We were lucky enough to see a group of lions on our second safari, as well. Two of our co-travelers were sitting on the top-back of the bus when they pointed out the group of three lions in the distance. I'm not sure how their eyesight was that good, as I could only really see them through the camera, but it was amazing to see them in the wild.

A trip on an African safari would not be complete without the quintessential vultures sitting in a tree, which we were obliged to see on the second day. There were about seven African white-backed vultures sitting around on a dead tree. They weren't as ugly as I had expected (unlike some of their other vulture relatives), but I was pleased when we drove away. For some reason, vultures just give me the creeps!

When we were able to leave the park, we came across an enormous group of giraffes, all together in the same location. It was incredible. Other times, we had only seen 2-3 giraffes together; there had to have been at least 50 in this group. Our guide said that he had never before see anything like it during his 10 years of experience.

After that, it was goodbye to Murchison Falls National Park, and back to Kampala. It was a great trip.