In 2012, Phil Harwood recounted a ridiculous journey for The Guardian: he had become the first person to canoe all 3,000 miles of the Congo River. It's harrowing stuff, so here's the very abbreviated version of some of the dangers he faced along the way: men with machetes, crocodiles, hippos, massive rapids, waterfalls, snakes, super scary fish, armed rebels, spiders (and spider webs the size of houses), and, well, let's sum it up like this. In 1877, Henry Morton Stanley set out along the Congo, and when the last surviving European member of his team drowned, he wrote, "I am weary, oh so weary, of this constant tale of woes and death."
There's obviously a lot that makes the Congo River dangerous, so let's talk about two of the most chilling. First, there's the Gates of Hell. MongaBay says this particular part of the river is essentially a 75-mile-long stretch that runs through a canyon that not only makes escaping the river pretty iffy, but it also creates a stretch of "impassable rapids." (As if that's not enough, there's also a 60-miles stretch of rapids near Stanley Falls, and another stretch that's an insane 220 miles long.)
Then, there's a swath of the lower Congo that's nicknamed "the abattoir." Why? It was once a hotspot of cannibalistic activity, and it's currently a hotbed of criminal activity.
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