Tuesday evening, we decided to make our way to Koka Dam in search of Hippos. Our guide book, as well as several other websites, indicated this was a 'reliable' spot to see Hippos, so we were excited.
The road to the dam was not paved. Poor Amir's Toyota van has taken quite the beating on this trip. I'm not sure all the off-roading we've been doing was what he signed up for when he took this driving job.
On our way out to the dam, we encountered a lone adolescent camel who was more than happy to stop and smile for the camera.
A troop of Baboons crossed the road in front of us as well. These are some BIG animals and I would not want to come across one of these if I was on foot.
We reached the power plant and decided to park and walk instead of continueing to abuse the car. There were several young men at the power plant and one offerred to take us down to the river. No Hippos he said, but plenty of Crocodile to see.
It was a short hike down to the water, but a welcome bit of exercise after being cooped up doing training all week.
It was a good thing we decided to walk. The road quickly became undrivable, with huge ruts from the water making it only possible to drive if you had a nice 4 wheel drive vehicle.
we hiked along the top of the river bank for a half mile or so, seeing nothing more than a few waterfowl.
Since Hippo are most active at dusk, we had started our adventure late in the afternoon. It quickly started getting darker and darker, but luckily was a relatively full moon which made it easy to see where we were going.
Finally, we spotted one lone croc on the other side of the bank. By now, it was too dark to get any good pictures. Our guide wanted us to keep going..only 5 more minutes until a rocky outcropping where we would be able to see a number of these scaley creatures.
Figuring it would be REALLY dark on our way back if we kept going, all of us opted to turn around and head back to the car. I think our guide was worried we wouldn't want to pay him since we really hadn't seen what we came to see, but his fee was only 100 Birr for all of us, so we were happy to give him the money. Even though we hadn't seen any Hippo, it was still a gorgeous hike.
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