Lake Mburo

I went to my first national park this week and hope it's the first of many! My guidebook calls Lake Mburo an 'underrated gem' and I think both descriptions are apt as I saw 6 other tourists while there. The park is about one hour from Mbarara- not far but with some logistical difficulties. Public transportation would take hours so we (a housemate and I) booked a car with a driver I've used before. After we started, he told us that most gas stations in Mbarara don't have gas so we spent the first 30 minutes locating one that did. Just outside the park, the landscape is typically agricultural with matoke plots, goats, and herds of Ankole cattle (native cattle with dramatic horns). Once inside the park, there is bush and, astoundingly, we very quickly started spotting warthogs, herds of zebra and impala, and troops of baboons. We took a boat ride on the lake with a park ranger who stayed close to shore so we could see birds and animals. We saw scores of hippos, cooling for the day in the water (we learned that there is one 'bull' and many 'cows' in a group, that they are active on land during the night where they eat 40-60 kg of vegetation each night, that the bull will not accept any other males in the group- even a baby-, and that they lack sweat glands so cool in the water). We saw incredible birds. The most beautiful is called a malachite kingfisher and google images has better pictures than I do. The vervet monkeys on shore were likewise hard to photograph with much detail but added to the sense that 'I can't believe I'm in Africa!' After the boat ride, we took a 2 hour hike through the bush with 2 other tourists and an armed ranger. He told us that the gun is to shoot in the air when water buffalo act aggressively. There are lions, leopards, and hyenas in the park but they are hard to find, especially in the middle of the afternoon. We tried two watering spots before finding animals in a pasture area. Lake Mburo is the only place in Uganda to see zebras and we saw hundreds. They scare easily, as do the many antelope-type animals (impala, elands, topi, bushbuck, waterbuck) and baboons so we didn't get very, very close but at one point on the walk we saw that there were zebras in every direction. The water buffalos we saw were not so skittish but have poor vision and the wind was blowing towards us so no need for the rifle that day. It was all amazing and I felt immense gratitude of being in that place at that time. The photos are of impalas, a zebra, a mother and baby hippo (who separate from the herd), and the lake.