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Published: April 11th 2007
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Yet another safari adventure for Frankie and Gerry...will I ever tire of seeing wildlife? Not if I keep having experiences like the past few game drives.
Last night we went on a game drive in a private game reserve - Schotia- with another guy from our hostel. In the afternoon we spent a few of hours spotting lots of different antelope, wildebeest, zebra, warthogs etc. Gerry got his first sighting of Giraffe in the wild, completely different to peering at them through a fence at Marwell! We also had our closest encounter yet with a White Rhino, which plodded right past our vehicle before doing a big poo next to us! Poor Jim-Bob doesn't like other rhino so he has to live all on his own.
After tea and scones (how English!), we climbed back into our open top safari landrover for the main attraction....Schotia garauntees sightings of lions! And they don't lie, we spotted two big cubs dozing in the grass as we drive into the enclosure...when I say encolsure it's the size of many other game reserves. As we pull up next to them to get a closer look we spot the mighty adult male lying
in the grass behind them with his mane glowing from the setting sun. Unfortunately when we try to get a bit closer they skulk into the bushes but it's still an awesome sight to see.
We then hear that the new adult female has been spotted further into the enclosure. Apparently she is quite wild and sightings are fairly rare so we speed off to see her. As we arrive all the other landies are heading back to camp, having seen her fail a hunt. We scan the plain for her and suddenly she emerges from the bushes just a few metres from us and walks straight up to our vehicle. She's a huge creature up close, all muscle and sleek fur and beady eyes locked on us. We all fall silent as this magnificent beast circles our truck, staring at each of us in turn before stopping at the back, eyes fixed on Gerry. My heart was racing, if this killing machine wanted to she could have jumped straight up and got any one of us, so I was particularly worried that a lion was showing such a keen interest in Gerry!! At that point our guide decides
she doesn't like the situation much either and suddenly starts the engine and begins to pull away, closely followed by the lioness. As she accelerates away the lioness speeds up too to keep pace behind us. We gun it up a track along the perimeter fence and eventually shake her off, just as night falls and an eerie mist descends over the park! Because we made such a fast getaway our guide is unsure how to get out of the enclosure and I keep imagining the lion will leap out at us at anytime! After what seemed like an eternity we reached the gates and breathed again. That had to be the best addrenalin rush ever, stuff bungy jumping! I wish I had photos to show you but we were all too scared to move to take photos at the time!!!
Apparently the lioness went for us because she doesn't like BMW engines!!
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