Lake Mburo National Park
on Jason and Anna in Mbarara (Uganda), 21/May/2009 06:02, 34 days ago
Well, we have finally visited a National Park after three months in Uganda!Lake Mburo National Park is one of the smaller game parks, and is about an hour's drive or so from Mbarara. We left Mbarara at 6:30 am, and arrived at the park just after dawn, as that is one of the best times of the day to see the animals (before it gets too hot later on). I thought we'd be driving around for ages before we saw any animals, but literally as soon as we had gone through the gate we saw a herd of zebra. There are only 2 National Parks in Uganda where you can see zebra - Lake Mburo and Kidepo - but Kidepo is in the very North-east of the country and it's really difficult to get there (partly due to bandits who [apparently] shoot at buses).After we'd seen the zebras, we saw some water bucks and some impala, as well as loads of warthogs. We drove around for a while, then stopped at the lakeside restaurant for breakfast. We decided to have a 'Rolex', which is basically a chapatti with an omelette on top, all rolled up - very tasty indeed!We then set off on our guided boat trip around the lake. Our guide, Andrew, was fantastic and extremely knowledgeable about the wildlife on the lake. We saw what seemed like hundreds of hippos - although I was slightly disappointed that I couldn't get any pictures of a hippo yawning! There are loads of beautiful birds flying around the lake - kingfishers (pied and malachite), fish eagles, herons and so many more. Apparently fish eagles can see a fish in the water from 1000 metres away, they must have telescopic vision or something.We went over to the swampy part of the lake in the boat, and saw a HUGE crocodile, as well as quite a few baby ones. The scary thing was that the motor on our boat got tangled in fishing nets, so poor Andrew had to get out the boat and untangle the motor, while being watched by the big crocodile! Luckily we survived to tell the tale...We saw a big group of baboons sitting in a tree by the lakeside, they were so cute.After the boat-trip we dove back to Mbarara. We had a wonderful day at Lake Mburo, and were very impressed with the variety of different animals we saw in what is a relatively small national park. The only animals we missed out on seeing were the lions (but there is only one pride in the park) and leopards (which are notoriously shy), but I'm sure that at some point in the next year we will manage to see them too.I had a bit of a problem putting our pictures of Lake Mburo on this blog - they take ages to download as the connection is really slow. I will persevere and try to add a few at a time.