Sh*t happens, even more so in Third World Countries.
Her big concern may possibly be the blood transfusions. Hope she does OK.
"...Zimbabwe..."
Cell phone service? Having traveled in some pretty remote parts of Tanzania,Kenya and Zambia the last thing I’d expect in such regions is a damn cell phone signal.
Yeah, right.
I notice they had no armed security to guard against hippo or other animal attacks.
The tourists were not allowed to be armed to defend themselves.
Hippos are very dangerous.
This one might have been to protect a calf. Then again, it may have been purely territorial. Lots of those.
Most of the attacks are at night, when the hippos are foraging on land, and a person gets between them and the water.
500 people killed a year by hippos makes the total of bear, mountain lion, and dog attacks in the United States look quite small.
She’s lucky. Hippos can be downright deadly when they get pissed off.
Hmm. Does she no longer want a hippopotamus for Christmas?
When you splish-splash, almost take a bath in a wild animal’s back yard, be prepared to deal with their hostility.
They don’t want us people there in the first place, and will let you know it.
Quint
This sort of goes by the rules of skiing and baseball games. There is a risk that you understand when you hop into a canoe. And when you hop into that canoe in Africa. You could have seen hippos in a local zoo. You could have seen hippos from a range rover. But this lady wanted to see hippos from a canoe in a third world country. The assumed risk she was taken was pretty darned high. And she went very far out of her way to take it.
I do feel for her. Many left unscathed from the very same adventure. But if there was no risk, it would not be called an adventure.
2nd most dangerous animal in Africa.
Can you guess the first?
L
I hate it when that happens... It's one of the reasons, many years ago, that I gave up using the DC Metro...
“The couple told ABC that they were never warned it was calving season for hippos, which might make them more aggressive.”
Oh brother. Here comes the lawsuit. The idiot should have done her homework before embarking on such a dangerous trip.
I was out in Masai Mara with my dad and a friend once, and we were walking about 300 yards from our car down a river bank to see if we could see any hippos. Sure enough, as we walked along the top of a high bank, we saw about 10 hippos on the opposite side of the river, on a sand bar, near the water. The river was about 50 feet wide at this point and quite deep.
Well, one thing led to another, and we attracted the attention of one of the big hippos, who stood up and walked casually into the water and disappeared from view beneath the surface.
Well, we didn’t think much about it at first, but after the hippo was missing for about 30 seconds, I grabbed my father and our friend and started pulling them back toward the car. We got about 100 yards along, and the big hippo came crashing up the bank right where we had been standing a minute before. We ran as fast as we could to the car and just barely had enough time to jump in and slam the doors before the hippo was on us.
Fortunately, he did not attack the car. We were in a little Toyota Cressida, so that would not have gone well for us. But if we had not started back to the car when we did, the hippo would have been on us before we had a chance to react. We would have never made it to the car, just another statistic.
Moral of the Story... Hippos are fast on land, at least in a sprint. Faster than me, and faster than you. If you are planning to outrun a hippo, it is best to begin with a healthy head-start.