Hungry Ugandan Hippo

One of the wildest moments (literally) we had on our three-day safari in QENP was our dinner with a hippo. As we were seated to our tables in the restaurant of the fancy hotel (in which we were not staying), Owen's excited voice urged me to look up. There, not 15 feet from us was an enormous, smelly beast. He chomped down on the grass along the open terrace, mercifully, not paying any attention to us - or my flash. They have terrible eyesight, but you never know. Over the course of the next hour and a half, he ate his way around the hotel to the front lawn with majestic views overlooking the Kazinga Channel and Lake Edward. Apparently, he comes about once a week. Who needs a lawn-mower when you've got a lake full of hippos? If we were all so lucky.... On our way out, we watched him for another twenty minutes - getting ridiculously close to the most dangerous land mammal, in the name of great video footage. Better than Lorne Greene.

African Wildlife Foundation: The Hippopotamus

For whatever reason, I can't load the video of the hippo eating, so this will have to suffice. This is for my good and great friend, Mr. P. Fontaine: I promised you a hippo. Not as cute as in the Telus ad, eh Erika?