Hungry Hungry Hippo

So I've decided Hippos are one of my favorite African Animals.  I really want to see Cheetah and Leopard too.  And seeing Lion is amazing.  The thing with hippos though, is that they are so cool.  And as a bonus, you will pretty much always see them, so you won't be disappointed in not seeing them. It was my goal though, to see them OUT of the water, as we only normally saw them in the water.  You wanna be in a safe place though.  Most people do know that hippos are the most dangerous animal to humans in Africa.  They aren't in the "big five," but they are very unpredictable and dangerous.  And despite their tiny legs for their huge size they can move fast!  When we got to the last watering hole I talked about in the previous post, we saw several hippos in the water, but one was by himself.  It was obvious he was just skulking off to the side, nursing his wounds.

 I'm assuming he lost his most recent spar over territory and attention of the lady hippos as he was alone and pretty scratched up.  I don't think it was his only fight either.

I love this picture.  I put the black and white I took on Instagram.

The watering hole we were at had a "hide."  This is where you can get out of your car and go into a gated walkway that leads to a viewing platform over the water.

It's so peaceful and beautiful.  Everyone is respectful and quiet and you can just enjoy the animals and nature.

It was from that walkway in the picture that we were able to watch the hippo.  We watched him for awhile and we watched the birds, even saw some fish.  Then we went back to the healing hippo.  He was starting to move around so we kept watching and sure enough, he headed for shore!

Guess he was hungry, he started to graze right away.

Is he looking at me?

He took a path parallel to the walkway so we kept moving along with him and finally got a full view.

Here is a good side view, he's massive!

We got in the car after that and tried to see if he would cross the road, but we didn't see him from there.  Not sure if we will ever see anything like that again while we are here. He was the only scratched up hippo we have seen so far. Don't feel bad for him.  He's still healthy, fat and capable of eating more, plus his wounds looked clean so he is probably just fine.  

Then we headed back to camp for brunch.