MAPPING
HUBERTA’S JOURNEY ON GOOGLE EARTH
Huberta’s journey was a
remarkable one, the mapping of her journey is a tribute to a young female hippopotamus
that walked her way into the hearts of thousands of people around the
world. It is a journey that still
captivates the hearts of people, young and old.
Other
wandering hippos
There were other
wandering hippos, the Amathole Museum newsletter Imvubu writes that there were
at least ten other cases of wandering hippos. None as famous as Huberta.
Useful
facts about hippo behaviour
Hippo’s spend most of
the day either submerged or dozing on sand bars or rocks. Hippo’s are capable of moving extremely fast
through water either swimming or walking submerged under the water along
clearly defined paths for about six minutes.
Hippo’s are mainly freshwater animals, they can
however sustain themselves in saline conditions, provided they have free and
regular access to fresh water.
When food is scarce and not available near the
resting pool, a hippo may move as far as 30 km per night feeding. They normally emerge from the water at night
grazing along rivers, estuaries and wetlands.
If no food is available near the water they will move inland to food. They prefer open areas of short grass crop,
an adult can eat up to 30 kg of grass in a night.
One can safely conclude that hippo’s are capable of
travelling large distances overland moving from one water system to the next.
Mapping
Huberta’s route
Those places of
confirmed sightings were plotted first. This information was obtained from
various letters, paper clippings and archive material from the Amathole Museum.
These places were symbolized by a hippo icon on the map.
Plotted or plotting is a word used in topography, an
easier description would be mapping.
Topography is the detailed map of the surface
features of land. It includes mountains,
hills, creeks and other bumps and lumps on that particular part of the earth. That is how we could discover nearly for
certain where Huberta walked.
The route mapped was in certain areas educated
guesswork. It may be that in some places
the indicated route is close to Huberta’s actual route, in other sections it
might be way off or be totally wrong. Her footprints will never be precisely
known.
One certain fact is known, she always
travelled south
Included is an alternative section between East
London and the farm De Hoop, this will show how far the route can vary.
Mapping the Huberta route clearly shows that
Huberta’s journey from St Lucia in the north to the farm De Hoop on the
Keiskamma river was in fact possible.
