The African Queen | Paraa and the Nile Delta — the reedy water where the story ends

Paraa is a ferry crossing, a ranger post and a jetty on the Victoria Nile, roughly halfway between the falls and the lake. Everything in Murchison Falls National Park routes through it, and the boats leave from here.

Most visitors go upstream to the cataract. Go downstream instead. Below Paraa the Nile loses its hurry and spreads into the delta where it meets Lake Albert: papyrus to the horizon, channels that close behind you, hippos surfacing in the middle distance like slow grey punctuation. This is the country the film ends in — the reedy, becalmed water on an arm of Lake Albert where the Queen finally comes up under the guns of the Louisa. It is a real place, and it still looks like that.

The delta cruise takes about three hours and is mostly quiet. Shoebills stand in the reeds and refuse to move. The outboard is the only thing aboard that belongs to this century.

Ask the boatman to cut the motor once, somewhere in the middle of it. In the silence you can hear the papyrus moving against itself, which is the sound Rose and Charlie were listening to while they waited to die.

Photo: the Nile in Murchison Falls National Park, via Wikimedia Commons.