Thursday, October 1, 2015

River Horses

As our boat tour of Lake Naivasha continued, we came upon a dozen or so Common Hippopotamus napping under a tree.


Several of the beasts briefly opened their eyes, gave us the once over and, perceiving us to be no threat, proceeded to completely ignore us as we drifted by, shutters clicking.


We would see more of these so called 'river horses' during our trip (nerd note: hippos and horses are not closely related). But this was the first big African mammal I saw up close. Very cool to see something in the wild that I'd only previously seen on TV or in zoos.

~~~~~~~~~~

Long ago I would watch Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom every week (Sunday night, preceding the Wonderful World of Disney). "Why" I would ask, "don't we have animals like that in our back yard? All we have are stupid birds!" And I would dream of being on safari, among the lions, and leopards, and elephants, and giraffes, and hippos, and zebras, and gazelles, and rhinos.

This past August that dream came true.

~~~~~~~~~~

This is part 3 of the Boat Ride in Kenya series. Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here respectively.

No comments: