VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Two Vancouver men have sheer luck to thank for escaping from a herd of angry hippos in Kenya.

Evan Petkau and his friend Luke Willms were on a tour of Kenya’s Lake Naivasha when the hippos started chasing after their motorboat.

“We got a little too close, one of the females felt threatened and started chasing our boat, and then all of a sudden they started coming from the side and the boat motor was going at full blast, and all we could do is just circle and circle until they stopped flanking us.”

Petkau caught the whole thing on tape and National Geographic got interested. “I’ve been talking to producers from National Geographic and Animal Planet, and they’ve all said that this is something that’s never really been captured before.”

The video also got close to a quarter million views on YouTube.