Puerto Triunfo, Colombia – Hacienda Napoles was Pablo Escobar’s pleasure palace, a 5,500-acre estate where the notorious drug lord held court.
He had a bullring and an airstrip. He stocked a private wild animal park with hundreds of elephants, camels, giraffes, ostriches, zebras and other animals. He installed four hippos in one of the estate’s 12 man-made lakes.
Today, Hacienda Napoles is in ruins and Escobar long gone, cut down in a hail of police gunfire.
But the hippos are still here.
The elephants, giraffes and zebras have long since disappeared, given away to Colombian zoos or left to die. But the hippos were never claimed because they were too large and ornery to move.
Now the original four have multiplied to 16 and, far from starving to death as some expected, they have learned to forage like cows. Local authorities say they represent a safety hazard – and are standing in the way of plans to redevelop the late drug lord’s estate.
Although there have been expressions of interest from environmental and research groups from Costa Rica to Africa, no one has committed to taking them mainly because of the cost and bother of transporting the beasts.
The local government has begun to float the possibility it might have to reduce or eliminate the herd by extermination, an idea that probably will not sit well with the locals, many of whom regard the animals as part of their identity.
