Paul Templer, a British tour guide in Zimbabwe, experienced and survived what is possibly the most horrific recorded case of a hippo attack.
On March 9, 1996, Templer led a canoe safari down the Zambezi River with clients including four Air France crewmembers and a couple from Germany. Also present: one qualified guide and an apprentice guide in a safety kayak.
They came across a pod of about a dozen hippos. As Templer waited in a channel, he saw another canoe catapulted into the air and its guide, Evans, thrown out — while clients remained inside.
Templer saw Evans being swept toward a mother hippo and her calf. He raced to rescue him, but just as they reached for each other:
“My world went dark and strangely quiet…From the waist down, I could feel the water. From my waist up, it was different. I realized I was up to my waist down a hippo’s throat.”
Templer was spat out, surfaced, and shouted to Evans — only to be attacked again, waist-deep inside the hippo’s throat. Once more, he was spat out.
But then, a hippo grabbed him sideways, with his legs dangling from one side of its mouth and his shoulders and head on the other.
“When he’d go under water, I’d hold my breath. When we were on the surface, I would take a deep breath and I would try to hold onto tusks that were boring through me to stop from being ripped apart.”
His apprentice guide, Mack, managed to reach him and drag him to a rock.
Templer’s left foot looked “as if someone had tried to beat a hole through it with a hammer.”
One arm was crushed to a pulp; his lung was punctured; blood bubbled out of his mouth; and he had a gaping hole in his back.
“I chose to stick around, and as soon as I made that choice, it was more pain than I could ever imagine I could endure. It was so intense I thought I was going to die, and when I didn’t, I kind of wished I would.”
Sadly, Evans was missing; his body was found three days later.
Templer underwent multiple surgeries but lost one arm. He later moved to the United States, wrote What’s Left of Me, and became a motivational speaker.
When asked if it is safe to visit Africa and view hippos, his answer is an emphatic yes. He calls his 1996 ordeal an “anomaly” and insists he doesn’t want anyone to be dissuaded from visiting.
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