Wildlife at Sabie River Sun

Hippo’s only feed at night and can travel large distances in their search for enough short grass to fill them up. Every night at 6:30pm the wardens here open the gates to let the hippo’s out to graze on the fairways and also down to the Sabie river banks. There are 25 hippo’s in the lake and come out tentatively one by one and are only seperated from you by a single strand of electric wire and little pole which the daddy hippo would use as a toothpick. Out of the 25 I saw one baby hippo, about as big as a medium sized dog, scampering around trying to stay in his mommy’s shadow. Glad I did not bring my Jack Russel, Maxy, he would have been in there trying to play with it staright away.

There are also a few smallish crocs in the lake which I am told roam the grounds at night and I swear I heard one doing a death roll in the water last night. They do that to tear up prey, as they cannot chew and it sounds like a giant washing machine. We saw one on the bank so close you could easily grab its tail, but even at 5 feet I reckon he could have given me a go. The grounds are also covered by Leguaans (Spelling?) Vervet monkeys and a number of cats which keep the snake population down by eating all the rats and mice. The hippos grunt and moan with thier huge voices which sounds like they are chuckling at a lame joke about crocs.