Lake Mburo National Park – Warthogs and Buffalos

After meeting many of the animals in the Lake Mburo national park, we are almost at the end of our journey. Now it is time for the buffalos and the very curious warthogs.

During our walk, we saw many warthogs (if you didn’t notice yet, they are nonetheless the same species as Pumba, from Disney’s The Lion King); they seemed to be, as I said before, very curious.

The ranger, in fact, told us a quite interesting fact about warthogs: whenever they feel threatened they, understandably, run away as fast as possible, what distinguish them is the fact that many of them then come back just to see who/what was chasing them. And this, of course, can be a very bad choice, especially when the predator hasn’t given up on them just yet.

Buffalos, on the other hand, usually in large groups, would chase towards whatever could be harmful to them; for this reason, they are among the most dangerous animals in Africa. It is not uncommon to hear that a buffalo has killed someone in some remote village.
Even our ranger has almost been attacked by one of them; I used the word almost since he, luckily (for him), had a weapon to defend himself from the aggressor. After waiting some time and noticing the buffalo targeting him, he decided that self-defense was necessary and shot him down. This was, in the ranger’s words, the closest he has ever been to death; as a charge from a buffalo usually ends up in that way.
Just at the beginning of our walk, we noticed a lone buffalo looking at us; we have been told that buffalos tend to kick out members of the group that misbehave, leaving them on their own; sometimes, these outcast can form another group of rejects.
The lone buffalo seemed very interested in us, in fact, he kept slowly following us; I felt like in one of those horror movies where the protagonist notices something getting closer and closer every time he turns his head to check.

We, then, met a herd of buffalos (30 or so); it felt both exciting and frightening to be just few hundreds of meters from such deadly animals, being with the ranger surely made us feel less scared.

Tomorrow will be the conclusion of this great tour through the Lake Mburo national park.
Take care.
/Nesh