Walking with the lions

Next day we were off again, heading for Antelope Park. Wow, what a great place with excellent facilities (i.e. hot, clean showers!), restaurant and real washing machines. Antelope Park is a place where you can do lion walks and all sorts of other safari type activities, so after watching a short video, we all signed up for a package deal before sitting as close as humanly possible to the fire to warm up!! The weather was windy and bitterly cold when we arrived and froze the first night, wearing as many clothes as we could (think Michellin man!)... thankfully weather was balmy during the following days though the nights were cold.

Our first adventure started off with a horse back safari which came along with a package deal.. while I’m not hugely keen on horse riding, my horse Mvuu (meaning hippo in the local lingo) was very well behaved and certainly gave a different perspective on seeing game. You can get quite close to the animals on horseback, as you they don’t register that there is a human along with the horse! Saw the usual suspects of giraffe, zebra, impala, waterbuck and wildebeest and actually really enjoyed the few hours. Had a yummy buffet lunch then a group of 7 of us went on a carriage ride in the afternoon. That was so bizarre, to be on a mule-drawn carriage trundling through a national park – the incongruity of it all was fantastic and we had a great time bouncing across the roads (except when we just about bounced right on out!) and spotting game amongst the trees. We literally fell off the wagon and stopped at the lion breeding programme, taking millions of photos of the older lions. Back on the track we trundled along, stopping along the way to climb a tree house high up in a fig tree, all 8 of us squashed in the small space enjoying our afternoon tea and cheap Zimbabwe wine.

Next day the group went for our first lion walk at 6.30am… Our group went for a walk with three ‘cubs’, Phire, Praise and Paka aged 13 months old and weighing around 90kgs each - really not much cub-like about them except for the fact that they were quite playful! You could touch them, scratch them under the chin and even hold their tails as you wandered along. They entertained us climbing up the trees and scratching their claws down the bark and running around the place. Praise (the only male lion) gave me a 'naughty' look and of course I promptly forgot about the instruction to point my stick and say NO! in a commanding manner. Instead I simply stayed leaning against a tree watching him with my stick in between us and once past me he turned around and nipped me on the butt – thankfully only getting material and no flesh!!! One of the volunteers rescued me from being eaten by doing what I had forgotten to do!!

After that awe-inspiring experience went for a cub view and these ones at only 3 months old so really did look like cubs even though they were the size of small dogs! They were so cute and playful, lucky as they usually spend a good amount of their day sleeping. Got great photos. Was a very busy morning with the cub viewing then straight onto the back of an elephant – quite different from Thailand as actually get to sit on their backs behind the guide. Didn’t see any game but enjoyed lumbering through the park and camp site chatting to the guide.

In the late afternoon we had our second lion walk, this time with the older lions, nearly 2 years old – they were huge and a scary experience watching three lions approach you then rub against your legs!! The lions named Kwali, Kwezi and Kenge spotted some impala nearby and set off on a stalking mission which was unsuccessful – apparently they make a lot of hunting blunders until they are a bit older. The lions came back with us for a bit but were being pretty lazy and lolled about a good portion of the time which was great for photos! Toward the end of our few hours we managed to lose one (common apparently) which was quite unnerving and stayed close to the group while the volunteers ran around trying to get them back. The only good thing was that we got to spend a bit more time with two remaining lions! These lions will eventually be released into national parks in a few years time, though in parks where there are no other lions. Hard to believe but lions in Africa are diminishing at a really high rate and though not on the endangered list they are definitely heading in that direction.

We headed away from Antelope park towards Bulawayo to a place called Burke’s Paradise, a private residence turned backpackers/campsite. It was really nice and for only US$1 upgraded to a dorm room with a bed (yeah!!) and enjoyed having cold beers from the fridge and watching old scratchy videos. Had to do cook group shopping which was hard since not a lot available and no bread (flour shortage)… then back to Burke’s where we joined most of our group helping to fight a bushfire that was closing in on the house. It was bucket and jerry can effort but eventually got it under control and the owners rewarded the mostly bikini-clad fire fighting volunteers with free beer which was well appreciated.