Safari Journal: Day of the Hippopotamus

"Did you know that the hippopotamus is the most dangerous animal in Africa?!"

That's not a line a child easily forgets when her parents have recently returned from their first excursion to the continent--and barely escaped to tell about it!

But seriously, hippos are supposed to be very dangerous (I hear they can outrun humans!), and, I thought, difficult to catch a glimpse of. So I was nearly beside myself when we decided the next morning to leave Lake Nakuru for the next lake down the road, Naivasha, where our guide told us we could take a boat ride and would very likely find us some river horses!

For those of us living in Sudan, Naivasha has different associations than just idyllic water wildlife, Out of Africa-type backdrops, and fresh water--it's the location where the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed, officially ending the north-south war. Some sources, in fact, refer to the CPA as the Naivasha Accord. We were interested to arrive at our next stop for many reasons.

E chatted up our boat guide, James, while he got everything ready and then we were off. Asking whether we would see hippos, James told E we could have our money back if we didn't see them. E said he might close his eyes then, but that sounded like a pretty good deal. So James oriented us to the area and said, "First let's go see the hippos and then we can talk about the birds."

"OK!" I said, "Great. Where are they?"

James pointed to a bumpy mound right in front of us in the water, "They're right there."

"Oh!" Yeah. There was no way we could have missed these guys. Hippos sleep during the day, so this being mid-morning, they were already in dreamland, resting their heads on each other's necks and backsides for comfort. I just loved that! We cruised the lake finding family after family of hippos. I never thought we would have seen so many (shows what I knew). It was so much fun.

I think that's where E first started getting out of control with the photos. Some of you have heard that we ended up with an extraordinary 970-some photos from the safari. Well, some 700 of those might have been of the hippos. We got them in all kinds of funny positions. James got them up and running for us once. We got the signature yawn shots. We just couldn't stop! It was like a photo binge.

The birds and other wildlife at Naivasha were also impressive, and its pristine Crescent Island was actually the site where much of Out of Africa was filmed, but for us, it was really all about the hippos.

Little did we know what would be waiting for us that night at the lodge in Massai Mara.