Lake Mburo

On Saturday, we took a day trip to Lake Mburo National Park. It’s approximately a two hour drive from Mbarara, so we left at 6 AM and came back around 8 PM, just in time for dinner.

[Becky, Claire, and me in front of the entrance sign! Photo credit to Claire.]

For the first time in my life, I saw zebras, impalas, buffalos (from a distance), elands, hippos, and monkeys in the wild. When we got there in the morning, we started with a "nature walk," a 1.5 hour guided tour where we tracked animals by foot. I think many people (myself included) expected some sort of trail, but we were literally trekking through brush and tall grasses. At one point during the walk, we paused in the grass to take some pictures of nearby impalas, and people started getting attacked by vicious looking ants. (Even those in pants got bitten, not just people wearing shorts or capris.)

[Luckily, none on me! Our guide told us to keep checking ourselves and other people. I had one small ant on me, but none of these monstrosities. Photo credit of Google Images.]

As you can see, they have HUGE heads and pincers. One girl was bleeding from her bites. Ugh, so painful looking.

After the walk, we had lunch (pineapple, watermelon, banana, and passionfruit tropical fruit salad for me--why can’t I just eat this for all my meals?) before going on a boat tour on the lake at 3:30 PM. We were supposed to go at 2 PM, but it literally took us two hours for us to get our food (slow service is pretty common here; they’re in no rush), hence the delay. We saw so many hippos from the boat! Also, we got surprisingly close to them--much closer than I had anticipated.

[Photo credit to Claire.]

[Screencap from one of my FlipCam videos.]

Lake Mburo was a great experience (even though I returned exhausted and subsequently slept in until 7:30 AM Monday... even after taking a nap Sunday afternoon). I’m looking forward to our safari at Queen Elizabeth National Park even more now!

More pics:

[Becky looking out over the lake.]

[Photo credit to Claire.]

[Photo credit to Claire.]

[There was a monkey in our van! It was eating the muffins Gordon had given us to for breakfast before we got too close and it ran off. Photo credit to Claire.]

[Photo credit to Claire.]

[Photo credit to Claire.]