Chapter 6 - Lake Mburo Safari Walk

On our second day at Lake Mburo we had a safari walk planned. Caz didn’t feel like going but we both woke up super early before sunset. We were both happy that we were up though, as the sun rise over the savannah was absolutely breath taking. It was still dark and as the sky glowed hues of pink and red we snapped as many pictures we could of the scene.
I had a freezing cold shower behind our Banda tent before going to breakfast and Caz returned to bed.
The hotel had breakfast laid out, but I was too busy taking photos of the sun rise to concentrate on my food! The view over the savannah from the hill was the most breath-taking time of the day, and as the pre-dawn light grew on the horizon it was even more spectacular. The mist over the savannah and the hills in the background were glowing orange-red. I knew this was one of those mornings that landscape photographers dream of, however I didn’t have the time or a tri pod to work on landscapes, but since I knew I was about to go on a

safari walk and see animals so I was happy!
After breakfast I was taken to Lake Mburo park entrance by our driver Hussain. We picked up our park warden guide and headed into the park. After a few miles of driving we saw a Saddle-Billed Stork and my driver and guide were excited to see it. After a while the guide and me walked out of the vehicle into the savannah grass lands, by this point the day was starting to warm up but the tall grass land was covered in early morning dew. I was still getting used to being cold in Uganda as Kampala is always hot with breaks of rain! The tall grass was soaking my trousers and socks but my walking boots were at least doing their job! I have been on a few safaris but never had the opportunity to set foot out of a car before, so was excited to walk over the plains of a National Park! My guide was dressed in full army gear and equipped with a machine gun. The gun was for my protection should the buffalos or other animals charge at us.
Sadly, most of the lions at Lake Mburo have been killed off, largely poisoned by the locals, as the lions hunted the local farmers goats and cows. The guide said that there was only one lion left who lived in isolation and was very hard to track and find.
It’s sad that this beautiful park no longer had lions and that was likely the reason why there is such large population of zebras, over 10,000.

The guide and I talked about the park football teams, Lake Mburo is called the Zebras! He was very proud of his team and the fact that the park rangers across Uganda now have a

relationship and compete in sports.
We came across a herd of zebras early on in our walk. I was snapping away trying to frame a young zebra next to its mother when the guide pointed at some giraffes. A couple of adult giraffes and one adolescent were less then 500m away. I have seen giraffes from a car but not on foot, so it was amazing to get that close and personal with such amazing creatures. After walking on for a while we came across some buffalos. My guide told me that these were male buffalos that had been kicked out of the herd and were the most dangerous, so we couldn’t get too close.
We spoke about the dangers of wild animals and that hippopotamus and buffalo were the biggest killers, they are much more of a threat to humans then even lions or leopards!
We spoke about different species of antelope and how to identify them as well as how the balance between different life works. We came across a termite mound and he explained how baboons and other monkeys feed on the termites, and their poo spreads the seeds of acacia trees. The acacia trees grow out of the termite mounds and that starts a new area of low-lying shrubs. The termites will migrate and create a new mound elsewhere. Inter species relationships is what interests me the most about wildlife and ecology. The relationship between a bird and a buffalo cleaning off ticks and other insects that benefit both species, or the relationship between plants and mammals

where the mammals spread the seeds of plants, the mammals feed, and the environment and surroundings change. I studied a little ecology at University for my Masters degree but never enough to fully understand the complex environment of a savannah plain.
By this point I was very wet from the morning dew, my legs were soaked through, but the sun started to beam down and I had wished I packed my sun hat! We walked back to road and was picked up once more, drove to another part of the park and walked towards a constructed pond where hippos sometimes reside. Sadly, we didn’t see any hippos but there were several eagles including a Black Eyed Eagle and Fish Eagle.
All in all, the bush walked lasted about 2.5 hours, and as much as I was enjoying exploration (despite being soaked) I had to return to our lodge and get ready to leave.
I found Caz writing the next instalments of our blog, made a quick change, packed and rushed to check out. Our departure was delayed due to a miscommunication between the office and hotel about our payment, but as we had booked it through the tour, all we could do was wait for them to sort it out amongst themselves.

We used the delay as an opportunity to take more photos & selfies and charge our solar battery in the baking sun.