Hemingway Adventure
Murchison Falls, Uganda
Sunbathing crocodile. No German towels out here.
As we disembark and make for the thick and thorny undergrowth, I notice for the first time that Francis' injury causes him to limp quite badly. But he pushes on with gusto, knocking aside the branches until we come across a telegraph pole, abandoned and weathered to the colour of the undergrowth around it. This, he tells me, is the remains of the old telegraph line that brought down the Hemingways. After more cutting and slashing we break through into an open sandy area at the bottom of a rocky cliff where the plane actually came to rest.There were many more elephants around then and the area would have been much less thickly wooded.
Francis leads me to the top of a rocky outcrop, a climb of about a hundred and fifty feet. The morning after the crash Hemingway and the pilot carried Mary up here to avoid the elephants and it was from this bluff that they first saw the approach of a sight-seeing launch, the SS Murchison, which was carrying a party celebrating a golden wedding. The son-in-law proved to be a surgeon, who diagnosed Mary as having two broken ribs. The boat proved to be the one on which Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart filmed The African Queen, and best of all, for Hemingway, it boasted 'An excellent refrigerator containing Tusker beer and several brands of ale'.
Francis and I slowly make our way down to the beach from which the Hemingway party was rescued. I ask him if there is anything left here from the accident - an unpublished novel perhaps. He smiles and shakes his head. Everything was collected and taken down to Butiaba, which is where we have to go if we want to know more about the saga of Miss Mary's Christmas present.
Looking for the crash site of Victor Love Item. Francis picks his way through dangerous whirlpools and foam from the falls ahead.
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PALIN'S GUIDES
- Series: Hemingway Adventure
- Chapter: Murchison Falls, Uganda
- Country/sea: Uganda
- Place: Murchison Falls
- Book page no: 186
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