In March 1898 the British started building a railway bridge over the Tsavo (SAH-vo) River in East Africa. Over the next nine months, two large male lions killed and ate nearly 140 railway workers. Crews tried to scare off the lions and built campfires and thorn fences for protection, but to no avail.
Hundreds of workers fled Tsavo, halting construction on the bridge. Before work could resume, chief engineer Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson had to eliminate the lions and their threat. After many near misses, he finally shot the first lion on December 9th 1898 and brought down the other three weeks later.
The first lion measured nine feet, eight inches from nose to tip of nail. It took eight men to carry the carcass back to camp. The construction crew returned and completed the bridge in February 1899.
The movie "The Ghost and the Darkness" was based on Patterson's adventures in Tsavo. Today the twin National Parks of Tsavo East and West form the worlds largest known game sanctuary and is home to large herds of elephants, Yatta Plateau - it is 290 km long making it one of the worlds longest lava flow and Mzima Springs, in the North of the park, water that has filtered underground from the nearby Chyulu Hills gushes from below a lava ridge into a series of clear pools. These natural springs produce 50 million gallons of fresh sparkling water daily. These waters are alive with shoals of barbel and Hippopotamus and waterfowl.
A unique underwater observatory has been built that gives you an incredible view of this crystal clear underwater world, where massive hippos glide silently through swirling shoals of barbell.
