Paul Templer was swallowed by the hippo (Image: Facebook)
A man died and another was ‘swallowed’ alive during a horrifying hippopotamus attack in Zimbabwe.
At 27, tour guide Paul Templer ran a company which took visitors down the Zambezi River near Victoria Falls. The waterway was also inhabited by hippos, and the two groups lived alongside each other harmoniously for many years, apart from sporadic ‘half-hearted’ incidents.
However, on one tragic day in March 1996, Templer had brought clients to the river, accompanied by his apprentices, Evans Namasango, Mike, and Ben.
The four men, guiding kayaks carrying tourists and paddling calmly along the waterway as they approached the conclusion of the tour, were suddenly struck from behind.
In the first-person account he wrote for the Guardian, describing the ordeal, the guide recalled he looked back to discover Namasango hurtling through the air, ejected from the vessel he was steering by a massive bull hippo, reports the Daily Star.
The nearest hospital was eight hours away (Image: Facebook)
Bull hippos typically weigh approximately 1.5 tons and possess huge barrel-shaped torsos, stubby legs, almost hairless hide, and colossal jaws fitted with canine tusks that can reach up to half a metre in length.
They are broadly regarded as amongst the most deadly and volatile creatures in Africa, causing numerous human fatalities annually when vessels are overturned or river passage is obstructed.
Templer instructed the other apprentices to guide the group towards a cluster of rocks beyond the danger zone, before desperately attempting to reach Namasango.
Templer found himself inside the hippo’s mouth (Image: Getty)
Just as he was about to grab his fellow guide’s hand, Templer was plunged into darkness. “There was no transition at all, no sense of approaching danger,” he recalled, describing the sensation as though he had been instantaneously struck blind and deaf.
He realised his legs were submerged in water while the upper half of his body remained relatively dry, and, horrifyingly, the surfaces surrounding him were slimy and reeked of rotten eggs.
Recounting the terrifying ordeal, he explained how he freed one hand and felt around – “my palm passed through the wiry bristles of the hippo’s snout. It was only then that I realised I was underwater, trapped up to my waist in his mouth.”
In a bid to survive, Templer thrashed around as vigorously as he could, eventually breaking free when the hippo momentarily opened its jaws.
He desperately attempted to reach Namasango once more, only to be dragged beneath the surface again. “I’d never heard of a hippo attacking repeatedly like this, but he clearly wanted me dead,” Templer wrote.
The beast then proceeded to savage him, biting him repeatedly, hurling him into the air and catching him like a ragdoll, before pulling him underwater, where he recalls gazing upwards through 10 feet of water towards the light above. After a period – Templer remained uncertain of the duration – the hippo ejected him with tremendous force to the surface, where colleague Mike pulled him into a kayak.
Paul Templer suffered horrifying injuries (Image: @paultempler8888/Instagram)
Upon initial examination, Templer sustained such severe cuts that his lung was exposed through his back – a gash Mike managed to cover using the packaging from a snack tray.
Following additional emergency treatment from a medical crew conducting a training exercise in the vicinity, the guide was transported to the nearest hospital, situated approximately eight hours distant.
There, a physician tallied nearly 40 puncture marks from the hippo’s bites, and verified Templer’s left arm was “crushed to a pulp.”
Bull hippos weigh 1.5 tons on average (Image: BBC Studios/Lydia Baines)
Following the initial medical assessment, Templer was told he would probably require amputation of both arms and one leg – yet, defying expectations, he subsequently regained function in two of the threatened limbs, losing only his left arm.
Tragically, two days afterwards, trainee guide Namasango’s body was discovered in the river, deceased after drowning in the wake of the hippo attack.
The creature responsible for the assault on the kayaks appeared to have vanished following the incident, and efforts to locate and destroy it proved fruitless.
“I’m convinced, though, that I met him one more time,” Templer wrote, recounting an expedition he guided along the same river two years after the attack. Subsequently, while travelling down the Zambezi, he recalls an enormous hippo surging from the water beside his canoe.
“I screamed so loudly that those with me said they’d never heard anything like it,” he said.
Following the unexpected confrontation, he explained, the creature submerged itself once more, disappearing from Templer’s sight permanently. He continued: “I’d bet my life savings it was the same hippo, determined to have the final word.”
