Up Close with Hippos

In Kenya, we have found ourselves getting closer than we have ever been before to some amazing wildlife: giraffes, elephant and now hippos! Over the Easter weekend, we had a couple of nights camping at Lake Naivasha. Our campsite was right on the shores of this vast, freshwater lake, with the lake and jetty on the left of the picture:

We were overwhelmed with the kindness of people here in Nairobi who lent us all the camping equipment we needed, including a wonderful 6-man tent with 2 bedrooms inside! A bit of a different design from the heavy, old canvas tents I used to sleep in on Girl Guide camps!

We were keen to get out onto the lake, to experience Lake Naivasha from a boat, with a local boat-man at the helm:

I was a bit nervous about getting too close to the many hippos who live in Lake Naivasha, but when I voiced my concern, our boat-man laughed heartily and did not seem at all concerned! We got rather close to this group of huge, heavy, hippos:

When living in Africa, one hears such frightening stories about how dangerous the hippopotamus can be. However, here we were in a campsite very close to the water where they reside, with just a short electric fence between our tent and the lake! There was a large, open gateway a few metres from our tent where the campsite opened up to the jetty, BUT there was no gate! It seems that the hippos are trusted not to come into the actual campsite! I may have had a moment of  trying to remember where I have put my Will (!!), but I did not want to upset the children by acting scared, so I put on my brave face and pretended that I like hippos very much!

 In the evenings, as we sat near the fantastic campfire carefully built by Andrew, we could hear the snorting and grunting of the hippos and even the sounds of their teeth pulling up grass. It was amazing to hear them grazing as they enjoyed their evening meal of lake-side greens! When we shone the torch from our camping chairs, we could see them clearly, lumbering slowly along on the other side of the rather tiny electric fence. I have never been so close to a hippo before. I approached the fence tentatively, just a few steps away from the hippos. I tried to take a photo- but the camera could not pick up their grey profile against the dark backdrop of the water at night. Besides, I was rather nervous about upsetting them by flashing camera lights at them in the dark! So we retreated to our chairs and enjoyed the experience of simply hearing and seeing these water-loving giants in their natural habitat, without having photos to remember how near they were.

Hippos were not the only wildlife we got close to: the children were delighted with these tall marabou storks:

There was also the cheeky monkey who sidled up to the rubbish bin after we had eaten our lunch. Climbing nimbly to the top of the bin, he reached in and triumphantly produced our apple-cores, munching happily before taking off up a tree with our plastic bags full of crumbs and egg-shells!

We discovered a few cray-fish who seemed to have lost their way and were crawling slowly through the grass. We rescued this one, throwing it back into the lake by the jetty!

All too soon, it was time to take the tent down and move on from our fabulous, first family camping experience ( I don't think camping in the garden really counts, which is all we had ventured up to this point!). It was lots of fun, although there's nothing like sleeping in a house again after a camping trip and it's nice to sleep without fear of a hippopotamus wandering too close to my bed!