That Hippo Who Almost Killed Me — My Wildest Travel Story
The closest I ever came to compromising with imminent death
I don’t usually partake in contests of any kind. Never had that habit. But when I saw Warren Patterson’s latest writing prompt for the Globetrotters traveling publication, I couldn’t resist it.
Wild: that’s exactly how I’d intuitively describe most of my life experiences. As most of these experiences are, directly or indirectly, related to traveling, I could share a wild travel story.
But when it comes to picking out the wildest, I realize it’s not straightforward. I first have to think about what is wild.
First definition that comes to mind: the opposite of civilized. Has to be in, well, the wilderness.
Then it evokes images of wild animals — a common pair of words. Has to feature some.
Lastly, to me it inspires emotions of peril and looming death… Has to be the story with that hippo in the Okavango Delta of Botswana that combines all the three elements.
Perhaps — despite the cartoon stereotype — you are aware that hippopotami are not among the friendliest of animals. Rather the opposite. According to some estimates, they are responsible for the worldwide fourth-largest number of direct homicides, losing the higher positions in order from dogs, snakes, and, of course, humans. (Indirectly, even humans are surpassed by mosquitoes via malaria.)
Hippos are by far the deadliest animals in Africa, where they exclusively live. Lions, crocs, sharks, and other notorious hunters we commonly fear are, in comparison, calm little creatures. Hippos do not hunt; they are herbivores. The only reason they possess their dagger-like teeth is to kill. They are cold-blooded murderers; they do it for the sake of it… particularly so the father.
He lives a good life. He works very little: a couple of hours at dawn and dusk, lazily tramping around and chomping grass. For the rest of the day, he either dozes or sows baby-hippos in the cool of his pond. He maintains a considerable harem, up to several scores of females. Young bulls are allowed into the bloat only as long as they’re fully submissive.
He deserves it. He survived many tough years of uncertainty to reach this position. He mostly owes that to his good mum who zealously protected him against his dad’s infanticidal tendencies.
She was so notedly caring that she even gained a reputation for good motherhood in human lore. The literal god-mother Rhea of Greek mythology hid her baby Zeus in a cave on Crete, lest he’d be eaten by his father, Cronos, until he grew strong enough to go ditch him in the netherworld and supplant him like the king of gods. At a time before the Greeks pioneered the concept of divine anthropomorphism, Rhea was known among the Egyptians as Taweret and bore the head of a hippo.
So did too that original hippo of our story. He grew strong enough to kill or exile his father, wounded and decrepit, and took over his cows. Now he can revel in his triumph, murdering his male babies before they get too strong to dethrone him, for as long as he can until he grows too weak to not be murdered by them.
When he grazes on land, he’s mostly chill; doesn’t get bothered. But when he is in his aquatic territory, besides his kin, no creature of considerable size is allowed to approach. The only exception is the elephant, who is beyond his league. But for anything else—be it a croc, a buffalo, or a human—entering his zone is equivalent to signing one’s death penalty. On one documented incident in Niger, a hippo alone capsized a boat and slaughtered all its thirteen passengers.
I only became aware of all this upon the first few instances I saw hippos in my life. Those occurred during my first trip to Africa, when I was doing an overland journey from Cape Town to Tel Aviv.
It still was early on during that trip. I had been in Africa for less than two months and had made it only as far as Botswana. I had seen hippos already in national parks along the way from South Africa via Namibia, had learned how to behave in their vicinity (just not come in it at all basically), and was feeling fairly relaxed about their presence as we drifted past their first colony, shortly after we left the shore and set off punting through the immense, wild wetland of the Okavango Delta.
The Okavango is a rare case of a river that altogether fails to reach the ocean. Springing from the Angolan highlands and streaming for 1,000 miles southward, it gets trapped in the Kalahari Basin, forming one of the world’s largest swamps before draining out and being scorched to steam by the hot desert sun.
Human civilization being utterly absent, the delta’s vast grasslands and maze of waterways are inhabited by one of the densest concentrations of wildlife on the planet. I was pretty excited to be there.
We were quite a large group. Tourists, guides, porters, some 30–40 people all in all. We would spend a few nights camping and carried a certain load of provisions.
We traveled on a small fleet of boats that are called punts. They are a kind of kayak; the main difference that, instead of paddling, you push them against the bottom with a long pole. These specific ones were also fully handmade of hollowed tree trunks.
Pretty impressive vessels overall. Each easily carried the steersman plus two passengers or a decent heap of sacks. They were quick and agile, skillfully maneuvered through the tall reeds of wide and narrow channels, nimbly huddling together while still moving fast upon the view of a hippo family. The fathers would show anxiousness but remained deterred by numbers.
I was, in short, impressed by those boats. Ever since that first ride, I got under a perseverent desire to learn how to operate them. The opportunity came on the last afternoon of the trip when a steersman and I left the group to go smoke pot by the shore.
He’d straight off introduced himself as Rasta. An adequate nickname; dreadlocks, Bob Marley top, rainbow beanie, and all. I had already asked him a few times to let me have a go on the boat, but we hadn’t had the chance. Mornings and afternoons, we were out looking for animals in groups. Noons were just too hot to even change side on the hammock. But the last afternoon was leisurely, chilling at camp before having a sort of farewell party with drinks and exotic game by the fire after sundown. Not long before that, when the heat became somewhat more tolerable, Rasta and I sneaked away to the shore.
Having artificially lifted our minds to a merrier state, I managed to convince him to go on a jolly ride. We pulled the punt onto the water, he perched on the bow, I balanced upright on the stern, grabbed the pole, and pushed into the inhospitable swamp…
Already, in this reserve, I had lived some of the best wildlife-related experiences of my life… There happened the time I approached the closest-ever to a wild African elephant. There I saw a pride of lions ambushing a hapless, isolated little zebra (they were out of view before I could see the outcome; either she died or they came a bit closer to starving to death). I didn’t yet know that there was to also be the closest I’d ever come to be killed by an animal.
Handling this boat turned out much harder than I originally imagined in my superconfidence by intoxication. I was striving to, some way or another, stabilize my body and make that thing move smoothly. Rasta’s ceaseless, stoned giggling made that all the harder. Twice, in the end, I fell into the water, causing both of us to burst out laughing.
Eventually, I began to get the knack of it. Slowly yet firmly, I was steering through the reeds and lilypads that clustered on the edges of the tight channels. The sun was plunging, painting a gorgeous golden hour. Incredible, nondescript beauty surrounded us; divine quiet, heavenly peace. Birds flew quietly between our heads and the lofty, gossamer, crimson cirrus clouds. A swarm of some huge, helicopteroid bugs followed us buzzlessly. Tacit, too, Rasta and I drifted through a narrow passage, rejoicing in the elation of tranquility and marijuana, when, all of a sudden, a fat hippo popped out of a bend ahead.
Huffing and puffing, he was swimming straight towards our part, seemingly not chummily disposed. The panicked seconds that followed felt like a lifetime. Instinctively, I passed the pole to Rasta, fell on my knees, and began paddling maniacally with my hands in the opposite direction. Simultaneously, Rasta braked the boat’s momentum with deft moves and robustly thrust it the other way.
Meanwhile, neck swiveled backward, I was attending the beast’s advance. He was a heartbeat away when he leaped out of the water, mouth wide open at nearly 180 degrees. What before felt like a lifetime was then expanded to an eternity. I envisioned what would happen when those jaws shut with the boat and us in between them…
I have had my share of serious traffic accidents; was in a coma once; have been revived from a number of overdoses; have survived a diversity of crazy accidents and dangers; the idea of death wasn’t altogether strange to me… But never before had I felt so powerless to avert that. At that moment, I just knew I was witnessing my ultimate thoughts. And when I was just about to compromise with that last flash of awareness… I find myself still alive.
With a vigorous, life-saving push, Rasta sped the boat away from the loudly resubmerging hippo head. With a couple more shoves, we reached the nearest shore. Petrified, we stayed put, on the lookout for our aspiring killer. He was still there, motionless, eyes projecting over the surface and pointing straight at us, guarding the narrow passage. We remained utterly speechless for up to five minutes, exchanging awkward glances; and another minute or so striving to suppress the episode of pseudobulbar affect that took us over after the sway of fright receded. At last, I managed to get a grip and speak first:
“Rasta, what do you think we should do now? Is there any other way around?”
“Not a short one. There is, but it’s long… and it’s getting dark soon.”
“Alright… And do you think it’s a good idea to go back the same way, crossing beside that guy over there?”
“No, that’s definitely not a good idea… That’s a terrible idea!”
“Right… And what you suggest we should do then?”
“Well… I think the best thing we could do is roll a joint and wait here till he moves away.”
“Yep, sounds like a plan,” I said, and brought out papers and stuff to roll one.
A while later, the sun had set, the sky darkened, our heads were high as kites, and the bloody hippo hadn’t yet budged an inch. We decided to abandon the boat there and head back to the camp on foot, lest we’d be late for the party.
Thanks to this travel writing challenge, I also came to become aware of this other awesome traveling publication by the name of Taking Off. I noticed lots of intriguing stories in there I’ll be busy reading going forward. But here are the ones I read through today and very much enjoyed by KL Simmons, James Jordan, Barb Dalton 🇺🇦, Catherine Arnett, and Andrea.
