Day 9: Breakfast with Hippos

We awoke by 5:00 am and with our guides wandered a quarter mile down to the Mara River across a steel cable bridge to the tent camp on the other side of the river. The morning chorus included crickets singing and hippos grunting and snorting after returning from their evening of grazing. One at a time, we walked across a narrow steel footbridge suspended across the river as it swayed under our movements. The dawn has intensely approached – first with a subtle glow on the horizon and then the light quickly overtakes the shadows of the night. We settled in on the riverbank to watch the school of hippos.

Hippos appear to prove nature has a sense of humor. Hippos commonly wander two to three miles during the night foraging and eating about 88 pounds of food per night. As they feed, their huge mouth cuts a 20-inch swath through the grass. They have a big fat inflated body supported on short stumpy legs. They weigh an astounding 3500 – 7000 lbs. They look ungainly and awkward on land but can gallop up to 18 miles when alarmed. One of the greatest dangers here is to get between a hippo on land and its escape route to the water. On average, five people a year are killed in this region by hippos that have been provoked by people’s actions. We watched as an attentive hippo mom waded in the river’s shallows. Her baby took the opportunity to nurse submerged beside her, nursing without having to swim.

We had a leisurely breakfast while observing hippos and their behavior. The hippos snorted and grunted, exhaled wildly sending up sprays of water that caught the morning light and turned into a mist of gold. We returned to camp about 10:00 am and relaxed with a fine lunch on the deck under the trees near the main dinning hut. The food here is fabulous with many of the vegetables from the Serian Camp garden. Fresh peas, beetroot, asparagus, lettuce, and fresh herbs all delicately and carefully prepared with mild favorable seasonings. I have seldom had better food anywhere – every meal, every day. The staff is earnest and helpful within an innate kindness and perpetual smile.

Out to the Land Cruiser by 4:00 pm for a game drive following the rutted road that lead from camp down to the Mara River north of camp. Clouds were building along the Great Rift Escarpment. The huge towers of thunderheads were rising and darkening. No leopards in the gorge today, so we headed out toward the open savanna. Once on the savanna, Dixon stopped abruptly and began carefully backing up. When we halted again, we looked straight down from our truck near the tire and there was a newborn Thompson’s Gazelle. The newborn was only a few pounds at most. It stayed frozen motionless in a tight curl and only its rapid breathing revealed the fear that it must have felt. With the start of the engine, the baby jumped up and bolted sprinting in an erratic dance for survival.

On the way back after watching the Mara sunset, our guides saw two silver backed jackals working on devouring a kill. Each jackal was happily jogging off with the rewards of a successful hunt. Their prey was the new born baby gazelle that only hours before we had watched take its first bounding steps. It was a poignant reminder that there is an order here and that the dance of life continues.