Hungry Hippos

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Ever been woken up by the sound of a hippo that seems close enough to open the zip to your tent? This happened to us yesterday around 11 at night when we were getting to sleep. Hippos are noisy to the extreme and in this case our fears were increased by the fact that you could hear the crazed animal splashing and snorting and grunting about in the shallow water; was it getting out of the water in which case our tent was the first one on its path (we thought we'd got the prime spot near the river but were already rather disconcerted after hearing another tour guide warning his team not to camp within six metres of the river)? What didn't help was the camp's dogs had congregated by our tent and were crazily barking their heads off - scaring the bejesus out of us.
Eric had happily snoozed through most of this but was woken by Zoe who by that time was in jungle combat mode crouched by the zip of the tent, fully dressed asking 'if we need to run for it are you ready​?'Within seconds with our hearts racing we got out of the tent and with brute force and lots of noise dragged it further back and behind some trees...took a little while to get back to sleep as you can amagine! Next morning found that everyone was as scared as us but were too frightened to leave their tents - they were also rather surprised to see our change of tent site.
The morning after we left Namibia and are now on a long drive to Maun, Botswana. It gives us a chance to catch up on some sleep well away from the noisy buggers.
PS arrived at the campground to find it is next to a crocodile farm - first night spent listening to bloody dogs going crazy at crocodiles....

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Comments

[Remco]

Eric and tents ;-)
Holy piiiiiiiiiiiep....! Klinkt spannend. Gelukkig heb je ervaring met het snel wegslepen van tenten... ;-) En het kan altijd erger: http://popol.punt.nl/upload/01sept2007/hippo.jpg Geniet nooit met mate!! Bye, bye, Remco

[Eric and Zoe]

snuffles and swallows
dear lovely t'dinkies -wij hebben eindelijk de kans gekregen om jullie knipsel te bekijken. hippo kusjes zoe and eric