A glare, then a bellow in Botswana

Hippos are among the meanest creatures of the African savanna, and Jeff Elder of Orange remembers vividly his brush last year with this one on a boat excursion in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. “We got a little close” to a pod of hippos, Elder said, “and we saw a trail of bubbles under the water. He brought his head out of the water, snorted and opened his mouth and bellowed. He was letting us know we got too close to the herd.” Elder and his family traveled throughout southern Africa on their two-week journey. “You couldn’t take a bad shot. . . . It was amazing,” he said. He used a Canon PowerShot S315.