Animals!

When I was a young warthoooooooog…

-from The Lion King

Everyone thinks that when you come to Africa, you are guaranteed to see lots of exotic animals. This is simply not true. When you live here, you do see a lot of birds (some pretty, but most pretty plain) and you might see a monkey, if you are very lucky. Unfortunately, living here is not like being in The Lion King.

National parks, however, are exactly like being in The Lion King! The other day, I took a day off of work and went to Lake Mburo National Park, which is about 100 kilometers or so west of where I live. I finally feel like I live in Africa, because I have finally seen wild animals!

We drove to the park in the evening, and spent the night in a nice banda. The next day, we got up early to take a morning walk, accompanied by an armed park ranger. Here we are before we set off:

Christopher (a local govt leader, he brought us to the park), Sarah (fellow PCV), and me!

We drove to a certain point, then set off traipsing through the bush! Our guide was great- we walked for over an hour, and saw so many animals just roaming around! My camera doesn’t have a good zoom lens, so my pictures from the walk look like we were far away, even though we weren’t- I took some better ones on the game drive later on, though. On our morning walk alone, we saw warthogs, zebras, impala, buffalo, and eland. That last one is a type of antelope- the largest kind of antelope actually- and it’s really rare to see any, because they’re pretty shy. We didn’t get pictures because we saw them so briefly, but it was really cool- you know it’s a rare sighting when even your guard gets excited about them!

Here are some buffalo from our morning walk:

At one point on our walk we were on a big hill and could see the lake in the background- there’s a lot of fog, because it was still early:


On the way back from our walk we stopped at the “salt lick”- there are salt deposits in the ground, so the animals come to lick and get their daily minerals!

Impala at the salt lick:


Some more impala:


After our walk we came back to the headquarters and had breakfast, where we saw monkeys! (They hung out around the kitchen area to see if they could pilfer any food.)

Vervet monkey:


There were also more warthogs nearby:
Warthogs are funny- in order to eat the grass (as you can see in the picture) they bend their front two legs so that they are on their knees! In general I think they’re just a funny animal- they’re kinda like a pig, but then not really, because they can run so fast! I got pretty close to this one, but overall I liked to keep my distance; when I was really little my grandma told me a story about getting charged by a wild boar, so I was afraid the warthogs were going to charge me, haha!

After lunch we went on a great boat ride on the lake, where we saw…

Hippos!


The scenery was beautiful… (Oddly enough, these hills surrounding the lake reminded me of driving through the South Dakota hills on a road trip last summer!)

Then we saw more hippos!

And fishing eagles:


And even more hippos! (There’s another fishing eagle in that tree, too!)



Our boat drivers said that there were around 200 hippos in the lake, and I sure believe it- there were hippos after hippos after hippos- I should have counted, but I’m sure we must have seen about 50!

On our way back to the starting point we also saw a young crocodile (Not the best picture- look to the left of the big weeds/grass!)

As we pulled up to the shore, we also had something to greet us…
This snake was really beautiful- blue and green- but apparently it’s pretty dangerous! Our guides chased it away with a big stick.

In the afternoon, we drove around on the trails, where we saw more impala, and more zebras! Our guide from the morning walk told us there are about 4000 (four thousand!!) zebras in the park.

Impala (we were so close!):


Zebra!


A big group:


People are coming! Run for cover!


After our game drive, we headed out of the park, back home to our respective non-Lion-King-esque villages. We continued to see zebras and other animals for a little while after we got outside the park- while the park does have an official boundary (on paper), there is no fence, so the animals roam freely in and out of “the park.”

And… that was our day! Normally I’m not necessarily a tourist-attraction type of girl- I’d rather really get the feel of a place than just go for a tour... I guess that’s one of the reasons I wanted to join the Peace Corps. But, that being said, it was great fun to take off work and just be a tourist for a day!!! (Although, I guess hiking around a national park isn’t “touristy,” in the Walt Disney-sense, anyway. It just seems touristy to me, because it’s something that foreigners always do, and something that locals hardly ever do.) But maybe the tourist thing isn’t so bad after all… I’m definitely doing it again!

PS- Sarah also wrote about our trip on her blog!