Spoilers ahead for the second episode of Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted Season 2 on National Geographic.
The second season of Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted has already taken the renowned chef to some unexpected, unique, and surprisingly dangerous places in the search for new dishes and ways of preparing them. The second episode saw Gordon Ramsay travel to South Africa, where he would go off the beaten path to learn the skills he'd need to impress a Zulu chief with his culinary talents. In the process, however, Ramsay and the Uncharted team ran into an uninvited guest: a hippopotamus that forced them to flee.
Gordon Ramsay actually had more than one hippo encounter during his South Africa adventure, but it was the hippo that crashed his big cook when he was preparing to serve the Zulu chief and his family that forced the Uncharted team go on the run. Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted showrunner Jon Kroll spoke with CinemaBlend about the second season, and he shared the hippo experience as one of the Season 2 highlights, including something that viewers didn't get to see on screen:
South Africa is just amazing. I've never had a hippo safety meeting before on another show. And when we showed up for the big cook after having already shot with a hippo stalking Gordon, we found out that there was a hippo at the big cook location that we actually had to flee from once. I thought to myself, 'Well, this is something I'm probably not going to experience as some other time in my career.'
The episode showed Gordon Ramsay's expression when he learned from Chef Zola Nene that they'd be cooking their dishes right next to a body of water where a hippo was hanging out, and he'd already discovered that hippos in the wild of South Africa aren't as much fun as the hungry, hungry or adorable photobombing kinds of hippos. Viewers only saw Ramsay looking over his shoulder and being a little more nervous than usual at the big cook, but Jon Kroll revealed that the Uncharted team had to flee from the hippo that apparently didn't spend the whole big cook watching from afar.
Of course, even if there was some hippo fleeing that didn't make it on camera, and the episode didn't show the hippo safety meeting, viewers did still get to experience Gordon Ramsay's hippo journey to understand why he would be especially jumpy if he had to cook close to one. Hippos aren't quite as easy for Ramsay and Co. to deal with compared to bugs, after all!
Gordon Ramsay spotted a "BEWARE HIPPOS" sign early on and seemed a bit unnerved to learn that it wasn't a joke, and local wildlife expert Lonely -- who arguably stole the show with his casual reveals about dangerous African creatures -- explained that hippos kill more humans than any other animal in South Africa.
Lonely assured Gordon Ramsay that they were safe from a hippo that was watching them fish, but Ramsay seemed less and less calm the more agitated that the hippo became, and he looked pretty happy when he finally caught a fish that would be fit for the Zulu chief and they could leave the hippo area.
That wasn't the end of Gordon Ramsay's dangerous adventures in South Africa, as he would go on in the episode to jump from a helicopter into the ocean and then brave the violent surf to gather mussels, and then face a spice mixture that could have been very extreme. Still, who could have guessed that the dangers of the episode would come full circle, with Ramsay stalked by a hippo yet again?
Fortunately the hippo incident didn't ruin the Zulu chief's meal, and he gave Gordon Ramsay his approval. Ramsay also had plenty of experiences in South Africa that were beautiful rather than dangerous, ranging from the giraffes in the wild to learning ways to shake hands and dance in South African style to exploring a market full of South African healing supplements.
Gordon Ramsay's culinary adventures across the world haven't come to an end yet. After spending the first episode of Season 2 in Tasmania and then venturing through South Africa in the second, Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted will head to Indonesia, Louisiana, Norway, India, and Guyana. You can catch new episodes of Uncharted airing Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on National Geographic, and find more viewing options on our 2020 summer premiere schedule.
