It was not really a 'skip-and-jump' through the jungle avoiding big cats. Doing that would be an easy way of commiting suicide. And i may be many things but suicidal is not one of them (LOL).
It is just me and some chums in my school would go to the national parks for a weekend (to the game lodges), and being schoolkids we would sneak ut at night on dares that i have to say (in hindsight) were some of the most stupid things we have done.
And the greatest threat was not the big cats but the animal that kills the most people in Africa every year. The Hippopotamus!
Most people think Hippos are the fat lazy oafs of the animal world but in reality they are probably the greatest danger you can face in the African bush! The reason for the danger is as follows: Hippos come out from the lakes and rivers at night to feed on vegetation on land (they are herbivores) and can travel miles inland. They are basically huge gentle creatures, and as i said before they are herbivores. However the danger lies in the fact that they hate noise, and will attack any creature that makes noise (or that comes between them and the path to the river).
Now, looking at a hippo it is easy to assume that they are slow and consequently easy to outrun! However the truth of the matter is that the size of the hippo belies the fact that it is extremely fast! The name 'hippopotamus' is Greek for 'river-horse' and those darn hippos can run faster than a horse ....literally! There is absolutely no way to run away from a charging hippopotamus, and seeing those things charging you can give you nightmares for decades!
And hippos have grotesque weapons in the forms of long curved teeth (also called tusks) on their bottom and upper jaws that are extremely sharp. Those teeth are used by the males for territorial battles, and are long and curved (as an aside on the first dayy at the game lodge the operators would pass around specimens of hippo teeth, easily the size of my forearm, to warn guest about taking 'ngihttime romantic walks' without an armed guard). Actually hippos have been known to bite crocs in half, and most of the several hundred people killed by hippos every year in africa are slain when the hippo (which can open its mouth wider than most animals) bites them across the midriff and literally slices them up into three pieces.
That is not an exageration. By three pieces i mean 3!
Anyways me and my chums decided to walk from one game lodge to another (a distance of around 150 feet) Simple, but the fact of the matter was that this was at night, and the hippos were out feeding. We decided to head out en masse (a group of 6 guys) basing that action on the logic that if we stumbled upon a hippo we would run, and because we could not outrun the hippo one of us would not make it ....but because we headed out in a group even thought 1 would be chopped liver at least the other 5 would survive.
In essence our logic was that 'a person had to take one for the team.'
And away we went, huddling together like some scared bunnies. Then we heard a noise! Or i think it was just one person who heard a noise and said to the group 'did you hear that?' Before he had even finished his sentence the other guys had already taken off at a full sprint towards the game lodge, since in our minds the only thing making 'noises' at this time of night was a marauding hippo. Gosh, we tore down at full speed and were halfway there when one person in our group tripped and fell!
The thought that flashed in our minds was 'darnit, hippo already got one person and we are still some distance away from the lodge!' Actually i believe the true thought was 'oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh ......ad infinitum!
Then another guy tumbled over and then we were petrified at the thought maybe more than one beast was on our tails! When we reached the lodge i remember we started shouting as we made the corner 'open the door, open the door' and as a startled guest opened it we just leapt in a flying dive (rugby has its advantages) into the place!
We found out later that there was no hippo chasing us and the two guys who had tripped over had just snagged their feet on some projecting roots. As for the sound it could have been anything from a hooting owl to a fervent imagination!
Anyways hippos are the greatest killer of people in africa , killing more people than other animals combined! After all they can weigh 8,000 pounds, run faster than most horses, make a sound that is an ear splitting 113 decibels, and have a huge maw with fighting tusks!
However i enjoyed that whole trip so much the first thing i am going to do when i visit 'home' is go on an animal adventure (obviously i mean an orthodox adventure meaning i will be in a van with tourists looking at the animals instead of running in groups of 7 trying to use the law of permutation and probability against hippo and leopard attack).
And actually our group was not the craziest! In my school back home i had this close friend who was from switzerland (my school had a lot of europeans) and she was into marijuana (yeah yeah, weed is quite rampant outside the US too. I tried to make her stop smoking to no avail, but that is another story). Anyways she and her friends had come with us to the same gamepark, and she had snuck off with some other girls to smoke some stuff ...and the place they had chosen was a hippo trail (hippo trails are paths used by hippos to walk between the lake and their feeding ground). That was probably the most stupid thing i have ever had of because the last place you want to be at night is a hippo trail (why: because for one you may go -kissy-kissy' with an 8 thousand pound maw of death called a hippo, and secondly other animals like antelopes use the trails to get to drinking water, and that means predators like lions and leopards man the trails to see if they can get some passing antelope). Hence getting stoned there is just darn asinine! Thus i ahve consolation in that although my group did silly things at least we never smoked drugs, and we never tried any stunts on any hippo trail!
And that makes what we did feel much less stupid (although if we told our parents they would probably have shut down our allowances and other pertinent rights).
Anyways here are some pics of hippos. Take care of yourself and God bless.
