Safari Trip!

We woke up early Friday morning and headed out to Mburo National Park for a safari. Mburo National Park is on the eastern side of Uganda and was the site of one of the first refugee camps in Uganda for those fleeing Rwanda during the genocide. After the genocide ended, the Ugandan government allowed many of the refugees to stay and live on the land because their homes in Rwanda were destroyed, so there were a lot of plantations and villages that we passed while driving through the park.

Mburo National Park is also home to a lot of different animals which we were able to see on our game drives. We saw lots of zebras, warthogs, impalas, giraffes, hippos, monkeys, and baboons which was super cool! The game drives were pretty much exactly what I’ve always imagined an African safari to be, we were sitting on the roof of a huge van and driving around looking for animals.

We were super lucky on the first day because there was a big group of giraffes walking right along the path while we were driving and we got to see them up close. Apparently the giraffes are usually pretty hard to find in the park and people usually don’t get to see them up close, so that was pretty awesome.

Other animals, like zebras and warthogs are literally everywhere inside the park. We probably saw hundreds of zebras while driving through the park, including a lot of baby ones. Fun fact from our tour guide: baby zebras have brown stripes that darken into the black stripes of adult zebras as they age.

We also went on a bout tour of Lake Mburo, and apparently boat tours in Africa are major tourist attractions for serious bird watchers because everyone on the boat except for us was intensely focused on the birds rather than the groups of hippos and crocodiles all over the lake. There’s a rare bird called the Great King Fisher that is apparently unique to this specific lake and it’s a big deal for bird watching community. I don’t personally understand the joys of bird watching, but it was pretty entertaining to see all of these people excitedly rush to the side of the boat with giant camera lenses as long as my forearm to take a pictures of a bird hiding in a tree.

All of the bird watchers after our guide spotted the Great King Fisher.

After the boat ride, we drove the hotel we stayed at, and I felt like I walked into a travel board on pinterest. The hotel is located on the top of a hill will valleys surrounding the whole thing. The “rooms” were giant tents with beds inside set up under individual pavilions. It was seriously one of the prettiest places that I have ever been.

The view from our hotel.

I also have like a million more photos from this trip, but I can't put them all here so if you want to see them I'll show you when I get home!