Here on the podcast we’ve several episodes with guests who have told the story of being attacked by an animal.
These include a grizzly bear, a monkey, a shark, a rattlesnake, a tiger, a pair of dogs, an alligator, and a swarm of yellow jackets. But we haven’t yet had a story about a hippo attack.
Until today.
My guest today is Honor. She was traveling throughout Africa and she learned about the list of animals in Africa that cause the most fatalities. Hippos are number TWO on that list, and number one may surprise you. She told me what it was in our conversation.
Hippos look like they would just want to roll over and scratch their belly. But don’t be fooled. They are extremely territorial, and can get very angry. And, as Honor saw first-hand, they are also quite fast.
Some photos from Africa are below. All photos credit to Honor Photography.
If you’d like to contact Honor, she’s in the Facebook group –
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook
Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/245
Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.
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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):
Here on the podcast we’ve several episodes with guests who have told the story of being attacked by an animal.
These include a grizzly bear, a monkey, a shark, a rattlesnake, a tiger, a pair of dogs, an alligator, and a swarm of yellow jackets. But we haven’t yet had a story about a hippo attack.
Until today.
My guest today is Honor. She was traveling throughout Africa and she learned about the list of animals in Africa that cause the most fatalities. Hippos are number TWO on that list, and number one may surprise you. She told me what it was in our conversation.
Hippos look like they would just want to roll over and scratch their belly. But don’t be fooled. They are extremely territorial, and can get very angry. And, as Honor saw first-hand, they are also quite fast.
Scott
This all started because you were unhappy at work. What was that about?
Honor
I had just switched career paths and I was working in corporate America after nearly a decade of working as a professional horseback rider. So, it was a bit of a career change and jumping into corporate America and having to sit in a cube for nine hours a day was absolutely miserable. I was a photo retoucher, so I was editing art for big corporations, magazines, websites and stuff like that. I decided, before I started my next jump to my new career, I wanted to travel. So I quit my job. I booked– it was a nearly a 100-day trip where I did just over a month in Africa, a little stunt in the Middle East, and then ended for a few weeks in Mongolia. I did a lot of it. I did all of it solo, joining travel companies here and there. The first leg of the trip, which is where the story begins, kind of, was in Africa. Africa.
Scott
How did you decide on the particular route or where you were going to go? Just places you thought, “Hey, I’d like to go there.”?
Honor
No, I had been to Africa two times before that and was absolutely enamored with Africa. I’m going back again this year. I didn’t have a ton of money, so I decided the cheapest version would be to see as many countries as possible to actually go camping. So, I found a travel company that did an overlanding trip starting in Kenya. Went through six or seven countries all the way down to South Africa for that small amount of money. Even though you are camping through Africa, you can see so much more. So I started there. I knew I wanted to meet a friend in the Middle East about halfway through, and then I knew I had a horse trek in Mongolia scheduled last, so they just kind of all lined up perfectly.
Scott
It seems to me that a lot of the fun is planning all of this, right? Thinking, “Okay, I’m going to go here” and then the anticipation of waiting for it to happen.
Honor
Very much so, yes. And this was definitely the biggest trip I’d ever taken. I had traveled quite a bit before that, but nothing like this being almost a hundred days and I did it almost all out of a backpack, which was quite an adventure in and of itself.
Scott
What would be the plan when you get somewhere and you’re going to overnight? You carry a tent with you, I assume. Do you find somebody’s yard to car camp in or like a public park? What do you look for?
Honor
The travel company I was with actually had a pretty good itinerary of parking and then setting up tents in some beautiful places. Some of them were very, very beautiful and remote. I mean, some of them were in national parks for their wild animals all around you and your tents. You have buffalo just 5-6 feet away from your tent, and they say, “Under no circumstance would you leave your tent to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.” But they did a really good job booking areas for us, and it’s a well-known travel company. I’ve traveled with them before and just knew that we were going to be in for some really beautiful sites with this group.
Scott
Now, you mentioned that the trip went through several countries in Africa, but this one in particular is Botswana.
Honor
Mmhmm.
Scott
And one part was called the Okavango Delta – am I pronouncing that correctly?
Honor
Yes, you are.
Scott
Okay. This was very remote. Can you describe this area?
Honor
So I remember very vividly that our guide who was, I believe, an amazing South African native amazing gentleman. He had told us before the trip started – and it was like a two or three day trip to get there and to get back to go actually into the Delta – typically, they’d say, “Hey, we’re going on safari this day. Go buy a big bottle of water.” And he had recommended that we each go buy a half gallon to a gallon of water.
A couple of us had, I think you call them LifeStraw where you can actually drink straight from the water. Some of us had iodine tablets just so that you didn’t have to deal with trying to find bottled water in some of our more remote locations. And he goes, “Under no circumstance can you use any of those in the Delta. The water is not drinkable, even with a LifeStraw.” So we went off, we bought a ton of water, loaded it up to our giant travel bus, drove what felt like hours into the middle of nowhere till where we met four runner Jeeps, which is what you typically take on Safari. Those took us another couple hours into a really remote, kind of, safari area where there were lots of animals.
We took some beautiful photos along the way, and then we eventually made it to the shore of the Delta. I mean, the Delta’s kind of, like, inlets of beautiful waters and areas like that, but they took us to an area where we met our guides for the weekend, which were a whole bunch of local gentlemen and what seemed to be their wives or their mothers. There was obviously quite a big language barrier there. Our main guides spoke perfect English, but the people who were going to take us into the Delta spoke very little English.
Scott
It seems like that would present a problem, although if they guide regularly, they probably know how to motion and communicate in some way even if they don’t know the language.
Honor
Yeah. We did a lot of gestures and signs to communicate. They were lovely people and there’s a big group of them. I mean, we had about 10 or 12 people in our group, and they had about 5, 6, 7, 8 polars. Those are the names of the people who actually have the giant, almost like bamboo reeds-like shoots, where they poll you through the Delta, kind of like a kayak except where it goes all the way to the earth, and they kind of go up the top of the handle to push the little canoe forward. It’s quite a narrow canoe. It’s only about maybe a foot and a half, two feet wide, and then it’s quite long – very different from your typical canoe.
Scott
Right. So there’s no paddles. That’s like what you normally think of in a canoe. Somebody’s paddling and, of course, obviously no engines, so your only propulsion is this long pole and someone who actually knows how to use it.
Honor
Yes, that is correct, and it’s beautiful. When we eventually got there, I asked our English speaking guide – because I’m an avid photographer – like, seven times, “Can I bring my camera on this? Is it going to tip? Is it going to fall over?” And he reassured me, “These guys have been doing it since they were little kids. They live on the Delta. This is their life. This is what they do every single day.” So I took my big camera out, got on the mokoro which is the canoe, and felt like I was going to tip over in a second. I mean, you literally are squished in this tiny, little boat with all your gear for the weekend going out into the Delta, and it felt very much like it was going to tip over at any point, but they’re professionals. I mean, they were able to navigate beautifully and actually go quite fast through the river with no motor whatsoever.
Scott
Yeah, I’m sure they’re thinking we can’t tip over. It’ll be a really bad Google review if that happens. Right?
Honor
Absolutely.
Scott
What did you see as the guides moved these long canoes around? What did you see?
Honor
So we ended up going right into the center of, like, big, beautiful streams and inlets. When you’re in the center, it’s just open water and reeds and prairie for as far as your eye can see. It’s absolutely stunning. You’d see water buffalo from afar – they pretty much leave you alone. You’d see beautiful birds. We went quite early in the morning and we spent nearly, I want to say, three or four hours just polling through the Delta through all these beautiful inlets and reeds and we did see hippos from very far away. They make kind of a funny laughing grunting noise. If you ever go on a YouTube video and see it, it’s quite a funny noise for hippos but they were so far away, so we didn’t even think twice about it. Eventually, we got to this little strip of land where we knew we were going to make camp and we knew we were going to spend the next day or two there.
Scott
And what was it like at night? I mean, I would imagine you’re out in the middle of nowhere, no light pollution, right? So was it really clear?
Honor
Yeah. I mean, I had been to Africa before, but being in the middle of the Delta where we drove on our bus for hours, drove in a 4-wheeler or a 4×4 for hours. The first night there was stunning. I mean, we had this beautiful setup. I mean, we set up our own tents, but all the local polars, the women and the men all cooked us this delicious dinner. We sang by the campfire and listened to the beautiful songs and dance. Then, at night, we actually went onto, like, the stream, right onto the bayside, looked up, and the stars were incredible – like, more stars than I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I know there are millions out there but when you live in the middle of a city and you live in America, the stars are great, especially if you go up to Wisconsin, but this was almost otherworldly seeing the stars at night.
Scott
Yeah, I’m thinking the word “magical” would be appropriate here.
Honor
Yeah, very much so.
Scott
Next morning, some of the people with you wanted to learn how to do the polling. Is that normal? Do they normally teach that on this trip?
Honor
Our guide– obviously, one main guy who stayed with us the whole trip spoke, I want to say, like, seven different languages and he had spoken to the people. We were a young group of kids. I think, at the time, I must have been very late twenties, so I was a little older in the group. The average age of people on the trip was very young twenties, so kind of a rowdy bunch. He had asked them, “Could we learn how to poll?” because a couple of us had good skills when it came to canoeing, kayaking. I’ve been sailing a few times. I can’t really say I’m good at any of it, but I’ve done it all. The guy said, “Yeah, absolutely. We’ll take you out no problem. Right after breakfast, we’ll go out on the Delta and we’ll teach you how to poll.”
Scott
Yeah. I mean, you think that you’ve been in a canoe before and this must be sort of a transferable skill, but have you ever polled before?
Honor
No. I have been sea kayaking up near Canada. I’ve been canoeing all over the Midwest, sailing here and there, but I’ve never used the pole in that sense where you’re like polling a canoe or mokoro – I’m not exactly sure how you pronounce it anymore, but it’s that very small canoe. So when they took us out there, the first thing I realized is that we were all horribly terrible at it. Left was right, right was left, and everything that you want to do that feels natural made you go the wrong direction. And mind you, you have to stand up in the back when you do this. So the two people in front can sit down. The person in the back is kind of in charge of making sure you don’t tip over and let’s just say it was chaos.
Scott
You felt unstable when you first got in it and now you’re having to stand up and somehow maneuver this pole around. It does sound like it wouldn’t be very easy. So there were three people in your canoe?
Honor
Yes. So with the big group that went out– I’d say most of us went out to learn how to poll. So there’s probably, like, 8 of us, and there were three for a little canoe and we were just kind of messing around in this little inlet. So, they took us a little further away from our campsite to actually learn to poll simply because the area that we were in was pretty muddy and pretty gross and then there was a whole bunch of reeds to the side. This little area where they took us to the side was relatively clear. We all got very much stuck in the reeds within about two minutes. The guides were laughing at us. We could not figure out how to go. They were trying to show us. Obviously, there was a huge language barrier. Nothing was really going right. They pretty much hand signaled sign language to us the two rules, which is really try not to flip your boat over and don’t get stuck in the reeds because, if you get stuck in the reads, it’s very hard to get you out of the reeds. But pretty much “Don’t go in the reeds. Try not to poll yourself over.”
Scott
And did you go in the reeds?
Honor
I ended up a little bit in the reeds. On the side of the reeds, kind of further away from where our group was at this point, I had sat back down. I had given the poll off to someone else. I could not figure this out to save my life. One of the gentlemen in my group was polling me and a girlfriend in front of me and we got stuck in the side of the reeds. We were trying to go backwards. We were trying to go forward. Stuck in there for, like, a good five or six minutes. One of the other gentlemen in our group who was quite a young kid, he was all by himself in a canoe, and he went– he was probably about 50 feet away from us and he got really stuck in the reeds. Like, he went so far in the reeds, we almost couldn’t see him anymore. That is when things started to get a little interesting.
Scott
Yeah, when you’re in the reeds, your visibility is quite limited, I would imagine. Right? Because all you can see is the reeds sticking up out of the water. Then what happened?
Honor
Well, I’m going to put some context into the rest of the story. I’ve been to Africa a whole bunch, and there are very few animals that freak me out. I’ve been told by numerous guides in Africa that the number one most dangerous animal in Africa is a mosquito, which is super ironic. I mean, it kills more people per year than any other animal. Followed closely by that is the hippo, which kind of shocks you because you see a hippo and you’re like, “Oh, there’s no way that giant creature, that kind of blubbery creature is going to be fast or going to kill any people.” I mean, I don’t even think lions made the list of the top five animals that were considered dangerous when you were on safari or on track. I mean, we had been, countless times, two feet away from lions park.
But when I heard this giant splash behind me, it sounded like no animal could have possibly made it. We heard this noise probably 50 feet to the left of us where it felt like a boat had been dropped in the water. It was just a noise that no animal could have possibly made and all of the giggling and the laughing that we had heard from our buddies on the trip had gone silent. All I heard from very, very far away– I mean, we were probably a good football field length away from our polers at this time, our professionals, was “Get out of the water. Get out of the water now!” Immediately, I looked at the girl in front of me and we both froze because we were told, “Don’t go in the water. Don’t get in the water.” And now I’m hearing in very broken English from very far away, “Jump! Get out of the water.” I had no idea what was behind me at that point.
Scott
You’re in a boat. How do you get out of the water? Do you poll yourself quickly back to shore? Obviously, that’s not an option. Do you jump out of the boat and try to swim? What are you supposed to do at that point?
Honor
At that point– the ironic part is that the boy who was actually standing up and polling tried for maybe two or three seconds to push us towards shore, but we were already kind of stuck in the reeds and he abandoned ship. He jumped out and just started wading to shore. Now, mind you, the Delta has, like, a whole bunch of sediment in the bottom, has a whole bunch of reeds, has a whole bunch of seaweed, swampy bottom, and I’ve never seen a human move faster. He was out and he just left us.
The girl and I– at this point, we didn’t want to get out until we heard from the Americans and the Europeans on the trip scream, “Oh my God! Get out of the water! Get out of the water right now!” She turned towards me and her eyes were just filled with tears and both of us had no idea what was going on right now, but she started sobbing and shaking. We were both in the boat at this time. I turn around and I see behind me maybe 50, maybe 100 feet away, is a giant male bull hippo who at this point had charged at that young man in the reeds, and then now had gone back.
Hippos do this thing. Elephants do this thing where they charge, retreat, charge, retreat, kind of a threatening display of like, “We’re coming after you, but I don’t actually want to attack you. It’s too much effort.” At this point, the hippo was retreating and we could see it out of the reeds. I couldn’t see it. I was facing the wrong way. She could see it. When I saw her eyes and I saw that hippo, I grabbed her at hand and we jumped.
Scott
I can’t imagine the adrenaline that you felt at that moment.
Honor
Yeah, it’s like those dreams when we finally got in the water and the water’s about chest deep. It’s those dreams where you feel like you are being chased by something and you can’t move. All of a sudden, your legs are just made out of metal and you’re trudging through sand and you just can’t move as fast as you want to. I remember grabbing her hand and just as fast as I could kind of wade and swim going through the reeds, and I just kept saying, “Don’t look back. Just go. Don’t look back. Just go.” Because if you’ve ever seen a hippo in the water, they’re fast. They’re faster than they are on land and they can outrun a motored boat in the water. I didn’t know if this hippo had sauce. I don’t know if this hippo was more focused on the gentleman that he had already tried to charge at this point. I was just hoping that the hippo wasn’t behind me and was running blindly through the reeds to what I hoped was shore.
Scott
How far were you from getting to shore?
Honor
Realistically, like a hundred feet. It really wasn’t that far but, because you can’t even see shore, because of all the reeds and you’re wading through muck, it probably took a good two or three minutes of wading through the water – what felt like an hour of wading through the water – until we finally got to shore on this super, super muddy bank obviously not ever designed for people to walk on. We just ran back to the shoreline where all of the women who were cooking lunch for us at that point were wading and kind of coming and saying, “Come here. Quickly, quickly, quickly.” because they knew that this was not a good scenario to be with. Their sons or their husbands are still out there teaching the tourists how to poll and they’re begging us to come to where they are because– in greater groups, hippos don’t typically bother you as much if you’re a big group, you’re making noise.
Eventually, we got back to shore and I can obviously tell whatever happened in the middle of the Delta behind us, whatever had happened had scared them near to death. They were panicking and grabbing us and trying to get us near them but, at this point, we still didn’t have 90% of the tourists. They were trapped on the other end of this little inlet. It was them and the polers and all the canoes, the reeds where the hippos were, and then safety where I was at that point with all the women and the gentleman who had abandoned us, and then my one friend from the trip.
Scott
And so when you are on land, you’ve said that’s safety. The hippo won’t come up on land and chase people around, or is mostly the water is the danger?
Honor
Well, they’ll chase people on land. Typically, when you’re on safari and you’re in a big group, whether you’re doing a walking safari or a driving safari, there’s power in numbers. You never want to be alone when you’re on a driving safari. The animals actually view the Jeep as an animal. So you always want to stay seated, you want to stay quiet because if you break that illusion, it can really freak them out and they can actually be prone to attack. When you’re on the shore and there’s a big group of you, typically, if you band together and if something’s charging you – which has never happened before to me but I’ve been told – if you band together, make a lot of noise, they get really intimidated by that. They don’t want to chase down what looks like a giant animal and they typically run away. So it felt like safety. I can’t exactly imagine it was the safest place to be in the middle of adulthood, just having tents and a whole bunch of people around me and probably what would’ve been 5 to 10 hours away from the nearest hospital, but it felt like the safest place at the time.
Scott
Yeah, it’s got to be scary knowing that these people who are local and live there– they are terrified and they know what to be scared of because, obviously, this is where they live. So who was still out in the water? I mean, the hippo has retreated by now.
Honor
Yeah.
Scott
But you don’t know what’s going to happen next.
Honor
No, because he’s definitely still in the reed. Typically, they are relatively nocturnal creatures. Hippos spend most of their day in the water, in the mud. It keeps them cooler. It uses, like, natural sunscreen to protect them and, then, at night, they typically go on land. So this kid had woken up a sleeping bull hippo, he got charged. Now, the hippo’s probably – we’re assuming – going to the reeds and trying to be unbothered.
On the other side of this little inlet are probably a good eight or nine other tourists and the rest of the gentlemen polers who had been teaching us. There’s probably a group of, like, four or five of them and then back on the shore is myself, a friend of mine, the guy on our boat, our English-speaking guide, and then all of the women. At that point, we weren’t really sure what to do because you could barely scream across the Delta to tell them to wait or to come.
Eventually, there’s enough screaming in a different language across the water that you can start to see, “Oh, someone is coming back. He has two of the American tourists on the front of his boat, and he’s polling across the Deltas as quickly as he can to try to bring back the tourists one by one.” I mean, the tourists at this point– we’ve all given up on trying to steer that thing, so he’s very kindly giving them a trip back to safety.
Scott
So they’re on their way back and you guys are on shore just kind of watching, hoping that they’re going to get back okay.
Honor
Oh, I was utterly convinced they were fine. At that point, I was like, “Oh, they’re just coming back. The hippo’s gone. It was like a fluke. It was just scary. No big deal.” I mean, the poor girl next to me was sobbing and crying and still very shook up. They are about halfway to us and they’re in the middle of the water and, out of the corner of my eye, I see the reeds rustle and, all of a sudden, I hear that splash again. That just doesn’t sound like an animal, and the reeds just part and are crushed down. All of a sudden – I mean, it had to be just a couple hundred feet away – this hippo is charging and he’s 100 feet away from the boat and he’s 50 feet away from the boat and this hippo’s not turning around. It’s not retreating. It’s not doing the thing that I know that hippos do where they charge and retreat.
I look around me and the women are, all of a sudden, starting to get a little louder and they’re starting to slap the water and scream and yell and try anything desperately to get the hippo’s attention drawn to them. My guide has jumped into the water. He is, like, waist steep, screaming, and he’s bashing the water with his hand, trying to get the hippo’s attention. I go, “Oh my God, they’re going to die. There’s no way that they can survive this. I’m going to watch people who I know die in front of my eyes.” It’s the closest I’ve ever been to seeing anybody literally die in front of me. It was the most terrifying thing because there’s no way this hippo’s going to turn around. The hippo’s now 20 feet away, 10 feet away. I can see this hippo is creating a tsunami of a wave just charging at these people.
At this point, everyone is screaming at the top of their lungs. The young poler – the young man on the back of the canoe who’s got to be 18, 19 years old – at the very last minute takes his pole, takes his big bamboo shoot, pulls it over his head and shoves it with all his might down the hippo’s throat, down the hippo’s esophagus, and the hippo clamps his jaw what feels like around the side of the canoe and retreats. I think, at that point, we all were in shock because the boat hadn’t tipped over. My friends haven’t gone into the water. The hippo hasn’t knocked them into the water and is mauling them or killing them. The hippo actually retreated. This poler saved his life, saved these two people’s life by essentially doing something I would’ve never thought to do in a million years – jam this giant wooden reed down his throat. At this point, one of the women next to me had fainted. She had collapsed because this must have been her son, this must have been her husband, some sort of relationship to him, and she was convinced he was going to die.
Scott
Was the pole destroyed now or could he still keep the boat moving?
Honor
He could still keep the boat moving. He had managed to shove, with perfect accuracy, this 12 foot long stick down its throat perfectly to hurt it enough for it to retreat and it retreated so quickly. I kind of thought he would be wounded and get pissed and retreat again, but it ran off as quick as it could into the reeds, and I think that whatever he did– I mean, I don’t know if this was long-term damage to this hippo, but that hippo never came out of those reeds again and the poler came to shore.
My two friends unloaded from the boat. They were obviously visibly very shaken. The poler is there. The first thing he does is comforts his poor family member who has collapsed on the ground, fainted, and our guide is just beside himself. He doesn’t even know what to do. Should he comfort the poor people who are about to watch their family die? Should he comfort his tourists who just almost watch their friends die? I mean, it’s just a disaster on the shore at that point because there’s still, like, a good couple people still on the other side of the Delta. We don’t know if that hippo was going to charge again. Thank God it didn’t, but it was still very tense at that point.
Scott
And how did those people get back? They were still on a boat.
Honor
They still had a boat. They still had a poler. I have never seen the polers poll faster than coming across that Delta in the exact same location that someone had just been charged and almost rammed by a hippo. They went faster than I’ve ever seen and they made it back to shore. Luckily, one of my very close friends on the trip, she was a pediatric nurse. She found a nice can of Coca-Cola. She used that as a little sugar and a little caffeine for some of the people who were obviously in shock, who had fainted and tried to get them feel a little bit more normal, tried to get them to get a little bit of the shock out of the system, but we were all very shaken up by that, obviously.
Scott
It seems so close. I mean, with the hippo getting that close, just momentum– it seems like that’s what would have caused the hippo to run into the boat. How close did he– I mean, close enough for the pole to go down his throat. But was anybody actually injured?
Honor
Here’s the miraculous thing about it. Obviously, we don’t speak the native language. Obviously, our guide barely speaks English. He showed us just a few hours later the front of his shoe, and it was like a work shoe. The Hippo had managed to close his mouth just around the front of his shoe and tear the sole from the front of his shoe off, which was wild to see because you kind of are watching it happen and it moves so quickly you’re not able to process it. But I don’t think any of us realized the hippo literally had his mouth around the canoe about to chop down and, if he hadn’t just gotten that timing right or just hit the hippo in the right spot, that hippo would’ve put his whole mouth around the canoe and I can almost guarantee everybody would’ve died because hippos are just so territorial, so aggressive. The fact that no one even fell out of the canoe is just a testament to how amazing these people are.
Scott
I mean, they have such a huge mouth and can open so wide with all those teeth. So what do you do after that?
Honor
I think everyone handles a little bit of trauma in their own way. A couple of the people in the group actually sat there and just cried. I think they were so convinced they were going to watch their friends and people who they kind of grew to love in the last month die in front of their eyes. The locals who were extremely professional just – besides taking a moment to just get themselves back and organized – started making lunch again.
I went to my tent and I took a nap. I needed to process in my own way. Literally, right after lunch, like an hour later, our guides are like, “Okay, are you guys ready for a walking safari? We’re going to go walk on the savanna of the Delta and we’re going to go on a walking safari where we might see hippos and lions and elephants.” And half of the group was like, “Absolutely not. We are not going back anywhere out where there are local animals.” The other half of us who are arguably a little crazy were like, “We’re here. We’re probably only going to be in Africa a few times in our life, maybe only once. Let’s go on the walking safari.” I think I was just so overwhelmed by everything and I handled trauma in a very weird way.
As a professional horseback rider, you work with large animals all the time. You see weird, kind of dangerous scenarios relatively often with horses being horses, and I think the only way my body could really understand what I was seeing was to go and just sit quietly and I just ended up falling asleep. It was very not so fun that evening when we got back after the walking safari when we went to bed and all you hear all night is the hippos making that kind of laughing grunting noise that you hear from the Delta all night long, literally 50 feet away from your tent. It was very hard to sleep that night but, weirdly enough, I was able to go and take a 20 minute nap right after that.
Scott
Well, the poler who lost part of his shoe certainly has a great story to tell people for the rest of his life.
Honor
Yeah, I’m sure he does.
Scott
Tell me about this walking safari. What does that entail?
Honor
Yeah, so I had been on a walking safari before. I’d been to Africa nearly seven or so years before that, and the only walking safari I had been on before was – I want to say – in Zambia or Zimbabwe, and the walking safari was an armed walking safari. So you’re walking with two or three guides with a small group with rifles just in case because you never know. There are rules in the Delta that state you cannot have any sort of weapon with you when you’re doing a walking safari. Now, I will mention there was a girl on our trip who was a little bit of an oddball and she had caused some issues with the group earlier in the trip. The travel company I was with has a “Three Strikes, You’re Out” policy where if you do anything absolutely egregious, like, you end up in jail for breaking a local law. They will leave you and they will leave you right there and then they don’t care where you are. But if you do minor bad things on the trip, you get strikes and at this point she was on two strikes.
Scott
How did she get those two strikes?
Honor
Okay. The first strike she got was– unfortunately, she had made some very inappropriate homophobic comments. We had a lovely lesbian couple on our trip and she had made them feel very uncomfortable. It’s just people being horrible people. So she had gotten her first strike for that. Her second strike was actually, about a week before on a driving safari– I told you before that the animals view the safari vehicles as animals. So if you break that illusion, it really sets them on edge. Now, for me, being a photographer, I get mad because, all of a sudden, the animals start moving away when you start to break that illusion. The guides get very mad because it puts you in danger.
We were around this beautiful herd of female lionesses and there were probably about 20 of them next to us just laying down, beating the heat of the day, and I was so excited to just photograph them. This woman – we’ll call her Sarah – on our trip was also very excited, but decided to show her enthusiasm by standing up screaming at her friend in another vehicle, and being told by the Safari guide on multiple occasions to stop that because not only is it rude and scaring away the animals, it’s extremely dangerous. So she got her second strike for endangering the group’s life while on safari.
On the walking safari, pretty much, the rules are– rule number one, stay in a group. Don’t leave the group. You usually, typically are in a straight line, so the animals kind of view you as a nice long animal. And don’t wear bright colors. Don’t wear, like, whites or neons or pinks. Sarah shows up to the walking safari in a bright white T-shirt, so we were already off to a pretty rough start there.
Scott
Oh man. It’s like there’s one in every crowd
Honor
Right. There really is. And she wasn’t really liked by anybody in the group, unfortunately, but when she showed up, I was like, “What are you doing? We all just survived a hippo attack.” Mind you, Sarah had also had her camera out and was videoing the entire Hippo attack and was told by our guide very, very quickly and quietly, “Hey, you’ve got to delete that. Not okay for anybody to have. That’s not okay for anybody to see.” To this day, I have no idea if she deleted it. I have no idea if she published it anywhere. I hope it’s deleted because I don’t really want to relive that. But she was bragging about how she caught it on tape. She couldn’t wait to publish it because it was so funny.
Scott
People are dying, but I might have a viral video here.
Honor
Exactly, yeah. Not my cup of tea in a human.
Scott
Yeah. So she was with you on the walking safari?
Honor
Yeah. So we went into the actual savanna part of the Delta, which is beautiful vast land. We had seen from afar some impala, some kudus, some gazelle, some birds. We actually found, like, porcupine quills, so it was really cool to see that from the ground. You could see a lot of things on walking safari like following footprints and trails that you can’t normally see on a driving safari just because they are a little bit faster-paced.
Our guide heard from quite far away– because these guides can hear and see anything from so far away. He’s walking us, he goes, “I think there’s a herd of elephants behind this clearing.” About a football field’s length away from us was a giant herd of elephants. There’s probably about 20 of them and this was so cool to see from the ground. We were kind of in this clearing where there were a bunch of downed trees and he’s like, “Stay in a group. Stay quiet. We’ll just watch them for a few minutes just to see the beauty of these animals from up close, to see them in their natural habitats.”
I’ve been on safaris enough. I mean, especially in Botswana, it’s like the elephant capital of the world and I notice, like, something’s a little amiss and the guy is starting to yell, “Come, everybody. A little closer.” And the elephant starts surrounding their babies. When they start to get their babies in the center, that usually means something is angering them, something is scaring them, and then a couple of the elephants see us. They do that thing that the hippos do and they’re charging and retreating. Mind you, it’s not nearly as close as the hippos, but their ears are flapping and they’re trumpeting towards us, and I’m like, “Oh my God, this is round two. We’re all going to die. We all survived the hippo literally this morning, and now we’re going to die from elephants. This is great. Maybe I’m just not destined to go to Africa anymore.”
Scott
And this is, you said, an unarmed trip, right? So you’re defenseless, no weapons.
Honor
Correct. And to be honest, when I’ve done a walking safari before, they told us that elephants– you can’t take them down with a bullet. The bullet is there for big cats. If you shoot at a rhino, even a hippo, at an elephant, it does nothing. It does absolutely nothing. Sometimes, they won’t even shoot. It just pisses them off more. Their word of advice is stay in a group, become a big animal, don’t make sudden movements, don’t wear bright colors and don’t leave the group. Everybody’s in this giant group and this elephant’s getting more and more angry and the matriarch of the group is starting to get more aggressive. I look over to my right and our guide looks over to our right and we both see Sarah about 10 to 15 feet up in a dead tree taking photographs.
Scott
So that’s what they were angry about.
Honor
That’s what they were angry about. Sarah had left the group in a bright colored shirt, very high up in the air, a good couple feet away from us, and the elephants all of a sudden saw that as a threat.
Scott
So Sarah knows how to make animals and humans angry at her.
Honor
Oh my. You have no idea how difficult the rest of the trip was. I mean, we only had about a week left of the trip after that with her. She did not continue the trip after that. I don’t know if she excused herself. I don’t know if she was asked to leave, but Sarah I don’t think will ever be invited back to a trip with this company.
Scott
Probably not, yeah,
Honor
For the best.
Scott
It’s like people that yell at a flight attendant or lose their temper and they’re on the do-not-fly list. Sarah’s on the no-more-Safari list.
Honor
She absolutely is. And I hope for her own safety and everybody’s around her that she stops going on safaris because she was an endangerment to herself and everyone around her.
Scott
So how did that situation get resolved then?
Honor
Well, luckily, the guide under very hushed but angry breath, yelling at her, “Get down! You’re pissing off the elephants. Get down right now! You are going to get us charged.” She waved him off at first. She’s like, “I’m fine. They can’t even see me.” Eventually, I think he said enough nasty words to her that she got down and joined the group. What you do at that point is the group altogether very slowly, very quietly, start backing off and, eventually, we get far away enough that we’re eventually kind of out of eyesight. The elephants calm back down. But dear God, this girl was trying to kill us that day.
Scott
Was the rest of this trip mostly uneventful, at least relatively what had already happened?
Honor
Relative to that, it was very uneventful compared to that one day, yes. I mean, anytime in Africa, you deal with wild things happening, especially when you’re doing a camping trek through Africa. But yes, that was by far the most interesting and adrenaline-filled day of the trip.
Scott
Did the rest of the group seem to recover from the trauma?
Honor
From what I understand, yes. I still was in contact with a couple of the people from the trip, still am. We are in a lovely group chat. We still talk about Sarah all the time and we still actually all want to go do another safari together because, the majority of the trip, the majority of the people I was with were wonderful people and we actually really want to come and find a trip down in maybe South Africa or Mozambique and go with our original guide who was just an incredible guy. So it has not put me off to safaris at all. I don’t think it’s put most of them off to safaris at all, but I think one or two people said, “I think this is my last time in Africa.”
Scott
Now you had an unexpected encounter with someone. How much later was this?
Honor
So this was actually back in November of last year – November of 2025. Mind you, when we got charged by the hippo, I want to say it was 2022-2023. I’m trying to do this weird thing right now where I’m trying to do 35 before 35, so see 35 countries before my 35th birthday. In order to do that, I booked kind of an impromptu trip to Cambodia and Vietnam back for Thanksgiving. It was only a week long trip. It was quite a long trip to get there and get back. I was traveling with the same travel group, ironically enough, and I showed up in the hostel. It’s like two in the morning. Wake up the next morning, get ready for breakfast, and who walks down the stairs, looks me dead in the eye but the young girl who was sharing the canoe with me, who saw the hippo first, who I grabbed her arm, and who I pulled her out of the water. She looks at me and I look at her and she goes, “Oh my God, you’re the hippo girl!” And I go, “Oh my God, you were in my canoe with me when we got charged by the hippo!” And we were both– I mean, granted, she’s a UK resident. I’m an American resident. We just happened to be in Thailand at the same– or not Thailand, excuse me– Vietnam at the same time and heading on to Cambodia together. It was just kismet. It was one of those one in a million chances that we ended up being on the same trip again together.
Scott
So did she seem like– I mean, obviously, she’s traveling again. She didn’t just spend the rest of her life in a fetal position thinking about that charge.
Honor
No, she’s still traveling and I’m still traveling again. I’m actually going back to Africa back in August of this year, but I think she made it more abundantly clear that no more canoeing, no more Okavango Delta, no more hippos. I think she’d probably go back to Africa again, but I don’t think that she’ll be going back to the Delta anytime soon. I think she was a little bit more traumatized by it than I was.
Scott
Or at least be in a canoe with an actual poler rather than someone just learning that day.
Honor
Some other American or some other UK person who has no idea what they’re doing.
Scott
Yeah. You said you’re still traveling. Would you do that same tour again in the Delta near the hippos, all of that?
Honor
Oh God, yeah. Africa is my favorite place on earth. I know I should say no, but there’s nothing that beats Africa and there’s nothing that beats that part of Africa, that kind of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana area. It’s just so full of life and so full of animals and, as a photographer, as someone who loves animals, nothing comes close to it. I’m not sure I would ever poll by myself. I think I would want to rely on a professional, but yeah, I would do it again in a heartbeat.
Scott
I wonder if they still do that with tours like, “Hey, you can try polling.” That didn’t seem to turn out very well sometimes, obviously.
Honor
I don’t know. I follow the travel company. I follow my guide. I don’t see any pictures of tourists polling. I don’t know if maybe they’ve cut that out of their itinerary, but they still go into the Delta. They still poll. It’s literally the only way you can see the Delta and its full beautiful raw nature. To me, if you get the chance to do it, I say do it because it’s just a way to see Africa that your average tourist can’t see. It’s so much more pristine and so much more wild. It’s worth it.
Scott
I would imagine that people listening to this may have other questions for you, maybe not even about this trip in particular, but about your– you’re obviously an accomplished traveler worldwide and you are in our Facebook group.
Honor
I am.
Scott
So, anyone that wants to ask you questions, come over to the group on whatwasthatlike.com/facebook. And Honor, thank you for sharing your story.
Honor
Well, thank you so much for having me.
Scott
One of the things that surprised me about this story is when Honor mentioned that hippos are actually faster in water than they are on land. That just didn’t make any sense so of course I had to look it up, and of course – it’s true. I really don’t want to have one chasing me on water OR land.
And if you have a question for Honor about this trip or any of her other worldwide ventures, there’s a post in the Facebook group for this episode – just make a comment there. WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.
And speaking of the Facebook group – I’ve had a few people message me lately and ask me, Hey Scott – those audio clips you play at the beginning of each episode. I’d like to listen to those episodes, so how do I find out which episodes those clips are from?
Easy – it’s a pinned post in the Facebook group. Last time I changed those opening clips was in the Fall of 2024, so they’re due for a change sometime later this year. And I’ll probably do like I did last time, and we’ll have a contest to see who can match each clip with the episode it came from.
Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.
And here we are once again, at this week’s listener story. You can send in a 5-10 minute story of something interesting you experienced. Just record it on your phone and email it to Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com. And you can hear your own voice right here on the podcast!
This week’s story will probably evoke some emotions in some people. It made me kind of mad, and kind of sad. I’d like to hear how it made you feel.
Stay safe, and I’ll see you next week.
(Listener story)
A time I wish I had spoken up but didn’t was when I was in labor. I was giving birth to my daughter. She was my first and only child, and this is partially why I was in the hospital. I had labored for probably 15 hours at this point. I was hungry and exhausted and I hadn’t slept for probably 25 hours. My mother and the father of my child were both in the room with me and they had left the room every chance they could get to go into the parking lot to smoke weed and I was so fed up with them. They would come back to the room with food. I could smell it. I couldn’t eat it. I was so hungry. I was only given ice chips and they would giggle about the dumbest things and I was in pain. Instead of being compassionate and supportive, they would just laugh.
The nurses had given me something to help me sleep because I was just so exhausted. I remember dozing off and I heard them laughing at me because I was making facial expressions. I look like a grumpy old man is what I heard. I mean, looking back, it sounds funny now but, at the time, I was so mad. If I had been a stronger person, then I would’ve kicked them both out of the room and just done it all on my own. I think that being there for the birth of their first daughter and granddaughter was a privilege and an honor, and they just made themselves look like fools and I will never forgive them for what they did and that memory that they left for me and my birth experience.
I’ve never spoken to them about it. I get emotional just thinking about it. I think about it often, but I’ve never told them about it because I never wanted to destroy any relationship that they might have with my daughter. My daughter has a great relationship with my mom and I love what they have, and I never wanted my daughter to have a tainted relationship with her father because of my opinion. Her father and I have broken up since then and she’s formed her own opinion and it hasn’t been because of anything I’ve expressed to her. So I’ve just kept my thoughts to myself. Anyway, love the podcast. Thank you.