Travel Time: 300 km, 6 hours (2.5 hours to Ziwa)
After breakfast, your guide from Unterwegs will meet you at your hotel and drive you to Murchison Falls National Park, stopping en route at the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary. Uganda’s rhinos became extinct in the early 1980s, after a period of civil unrest and heavy poaching. Ziwa was established over ten years ago to breed black and white rhinos, and restore the populations in Uganda’s National Parks. Ziwa offers visitors the rare opportunity to take a walking safari with the rhinos and be only mere feet from them!
After lunch you will continue on to Murchison Falls, entering the park you will drive to the Nile River, catching a ferry across to reach your lodge.
This morning you will depart for an early morning game drive across the rolling plains of Uganda’s largest National Park. The 3,893 sq km park is home to a range of animals, and you will have a chance of viewing some of the Park’s residents including lions, giraffes, hartebeest, buffalo, and elephants. For the birders amongst you, these areas support the secretary bird and the black chested snake eagle, to name a few.
In the afternoon, go for a boat trip to the base of Murchison Falls, where the Nile thunders through a small 7 meter gap plunging 43 meters into Lake Albert. The banks of the Nile are densely populated with crocodiles, hippopotamus, and a range of other wildlife that come to the river to drink. There is also the option of getting off the boat and hiking up the side of the falls to the top.
Optional Activities:
1. Falls Hike: Stopping to take pictures at the base of the falls on the boat trip, adventurers can then disembark from the boat and climb up to the actual top of the falls. The forty five minute hike is not very challenging, and provides spectacular views of the falls.
2. Mubako Cultural Performance: The remote community of Mubako is located beside the sprawling savannah of Murchison Falls National Park. The village is a collection of traditional thatched mud huts around a central clearing. At dusk, the local cultural groups Alur and Campfire perform vibrant songs and dances around a campfire accompanied by the beautiful sound of the adungu.
Accommodation: Pakuba Game lodge
A wonderful safari game lodge found in the Murchison Falls National Park, the lodge has been refurbished with a touch of class. It has 11 Guest rooms which are self-contained. It offers a warm and inviting atmosphere and it’s a home to a wonderful selection of birds, all the general plains game from Giraffe to Impala and innumerable species of reptiles and insects. The area is blessed with a temperate climate all year round. Accommodation is luxurious and all rooms have bathroom en suite and a terrace.
Meals are a combination of Ugandan and French cuisine with excellent Ugandan wines to complete the experience. Special diets are available on request.
Have breakfast and then drive back to Kampala passing via the top of the falls where you can get a closer look and the falls before departing back to Kampala for the evening.