My second hunt was a hunt I won through DSC with Michel Mantheakis--a great gentleman and icon in Tanzania. It was to the Kilombero region while it was still WILD. Two buffalo, one really nice, but the most thrilling part of the hunt was when a broken starter on the swamp buggy (brought over from Florida) stranded us on the far side of a large island late in the afternoon. The hippos were breeding, had already knocked the motor off one of the boats attacking it, and none of the fishermen wanted to give us a ride downriver which was infested with them. Finally two men agreed to paddle us down in their dugout for $20 and a toothbrush, and all we did was pass over or through pods of hippos and slide by some truly gargantuan crocs. Hippo heads would go down at the approach, with the dominant male usually charging toward us underwater, waves rippling over his wake, only to turn at the last moment and bust out through the mateti cane on the bank. The men would stop paddling and glide quietly through the area where the hippos were still submerged with fingers crossed. One croc came sliding out of a slough shielded by grass right on top of us so that it whacked the dugout we were in with its tail while trying to submerge. The game scout cried, "don't shoot, is not attacking, is just a collision! But man, what a croc--maybe 5 1/2 meters." The PH got worried after darkness fell because we kept hearing hippos behind us, meaning we had passed though them without knowing. Finally we heard the camp generators and made our way to camp, having traveled an estimated 15 miles.
As we were disembarking the dugout, the PH said, "Now, we didn't want to offend you, pastor, but the reason why they gave us a ride in the first place was because a witchdoctor had sacrificed a chicken in their boat and told them, "now the hippos will flee from you and not attack you."
Makes a nice bedtime story, don't you think?
A fellow later commented that it was the most dangerous thing I did during my safari...but he didn't know about me stepping literally on the backside of a hippo laying up in the grass that took off like a 5000 lb rabbit! Then again, two weeks after I left a western medical doctor was snatched right out of a dugout by a croc, and body never recovered...
