Lake Mburo

The power is out but the generator is running smoothly tonight, and despite the fact that the functioning lights have attracted an extremely large wasp-like character which is now dive bombing into my hair, I'm sticking to my goal of one blog post per day until I'm caught up to real time.  

I know, my dedication is truly inspirational.

But I still have some work to do ... this post is about what we did on June 11th.  It was the weekend after our first week of work at RHSP, and we decided to take a trip to Lake Mburo National Park, which is about 3 hours west of Kalisizo.

First stop:  a hike through the grasslands, led by an armed guide.

Photo by Leigh Bernstein

Our guide, Godfrey, carried a rifle and his shirt said 'No Surrender' so I think we were in good hands.

Zebras!!!  I know why they have stripes... but they weren't very well camouflaged here.

Impalas... just look like deer.  I feel very neutral about impalas.  But there were a lot of them.

This is the animal I was most scared of.  The furry caterpillars here are extremely poisonous and can cause skin ulcerations and nerve damage if you touch them - and sometimes if you even touch where they've crawled.  I found this out after shaking one off of my water bottle a few days earlier.  I had thought about just taking it off with my hand but decided against it, and in this case my general dislike of crawly things was actually beneficial.  Fortunately my skin and nerves are still intact as far as I can tell.

WHEN I WAS A YOUNG WARTHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOG

Photo by Megan Guzman

Up up up...

Photo by Megan Guzman

 We hiked basically to the top of the world.

Proof we made it all the way to the top...

But the view is really much better without people in safari outfits in front of it.

See how the sky is purple at the top of this picture?  This day was the beginning of the end of my camera, which has since decided that everything in Uganda looks best purple and wavy.  Expect a lot of photo credits to Leigh, Megan and Elizabeth for a while.  My new camera should arrive next week with some researchers who are coming to RHSP from Columbia, who have generously agreed to give up some valuable luggage space on the way here.

After the hike, we drove around to see some other sights in the park.

 I know this is only a few steps above the manatee ('blob in the water') pictures I took in Florida at age 10, but come on, it's a HIPPO!  Okay, fine, it's part of a hippo's back.  Still exciting.

An offended cape buffalo.  One of these is the reason why, since 2008, it's required to have an armed guide with you when walking around the park.  This buffalo didn't seem to like us very much, so we didn't hang around long.

The monkeys, however, were perfectly friendly. 

We saw some more hippos in the lake - okay, hippo faces.  Part by part, we are working up to an entire hippo.  Sadly, we are not skilled at taking photos through binoculars, so you'll just have to take our word for it.

Coming up in future posts (hopefully tomorrow):  Even more exciting animal photos from our trip to Queen Elizabeth National Park.  Not to give anything away about what we saw... but they may or may not have had a starring role in The Lion King.  

On another note... what number of Lion King references can I make in one blog post before it becomes unacceptable?