Mini Safari

Hold on to your hats, this is going to be a long one, skip to the photos at the end if you wish.  And remember this is just the mini one, wait till I get on to the main event…..

We set off in good heart to Mburu National park approx 2 hours away, there were 6 of us in the Corolla, but that is more that comfortable by local standards; taxi’s won’t set off with less than seven passengers, that includes one on the drivers seat.

We got about half an hour down the road, cruising down a hill, it is not unusual for cars and motor bike to free wheel down the hills; when our driver pulled over.  It seemed that the timing belt had gone, one for the RAC perhaps, Ugandan style this involved flagging down a passing motorbike, getting a lift back to the last town, returning with a well dressed, engineer, who didn’t have any spanners, so he returned on another passing motorbike and came back on another with spanner, removed the broken belt, returned on another bike with new belt and mechanic, who would do the changing.  The car was jacked up and propped on the spare wheel, which was flat; the remaining tyres were all slicks; save to say three and a half hours later we were on out way; we finally got to the park at 2pm but still thought we would make the 4pm boat trip and a game drive, but we managed to take a wrong turning and many more, so only just getting to the boat in time.

Most of the area in which I am looks, from a distance like rolling pasture land, all farmed and cultivated with many cows and crops; it is only when you look closely that you see the crops are often bananas and pineapples and the cows are the large horned Acholi that you realises it is not the English rural idyll.  When we entered the gates of the national park, it all changed to scrub land and almost immediately we ran into zebras, antelope and warthog; there are cheetahs in this park apparently; and a pride of lions was spotted there in 2008.  We got hopelessly lost and the heavens opened, adding further to the uncertainty of the track worthiness of the car over the potholes and puddles.  It was great though just to be driving along and have to stop to let a herd over Zebra cross, generally followed by antelope.  The monkeys and baboons generally kept their distance; although the warthogs were quite lugubrious in crossing the road and looked very fierce;

We eventually found the right point on the lake to catch the boat, too late for any lunch, and managed to get on.  I was particularly excited as I have always wanted to see Hippos in the wild and sure enough they were the fist thing we came across, a particularly antsi male who opened his mouth to us on cue, we had hardly sat down, he then rushed at the boat, and leapt out of the water creating a great splash and huge consternation on the boat; the guide was at pains to reassure us stay no hippo had ever hit a boat.  It took a while for the passengers to settle down.  I managed to get a photo and continued snapping at the group and got my favourite of the mother and baby, which is what daddy was probably so protective about.

The rest of the boat trip was peaceful, there are about 300 hippos in the lake and we had ample opportunity to watch various groups.  Because of the rain there were no large crocodiles out of the water but we did see a couple of small ones.  There were lots of see eagles looking down imperiously over us and apparently we saw a twitchers dream of a bird, the African fin foot, which is very rare. The lots of birds, the most memorable of which were the malachite and pied kingfishers.

We returned to land and an interesting trip to the loo passes the warthogs, who for all the ferocious looks are really quite chilled, Hakuna Matata I guess.

We were all starving and so gave up on the game drive; but I hope to return and camp over night before I leave.

The splash the hippo made!

The african fin foot, for all you twitchers

Hakuna Matata