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Published: June 17th 2007
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Highlight of the Trip - Number 1
Arrived at Antelope Park and had a guided tour and presentation about what activities we could do over the next few days - oh dear, here goes the budget! Upgraded to a colonial, riverside tent, complete with ensuite. Very weird showering under canvas. It had a lovely balcony where we sat watching the sunset over the river and birds skittering across the water.
Lion Cubs Our first activity that afternoon was to visit the lion cubs. What a fantastic experience! We went into a large enclosure with four gorgeous 3-month old cubs, who were all much bigger than we expected. And very boisterous too! Think of a playful young kitten but multiply the size of the claws and teeth a few times. Jase has the hole in his t-shirt to prove it...and very proud he is of it too (yeah, obviously it was an OCC t-shirt). It was great being able to stroke and play with the cubs and was worth all the nibbles (Rach had teeth marks in her arm) and scratches
Lion Walk Up early to take some lion cubs walkies at sunrise. These babies were a lot bigger
Rach and a lion cub
Ouch! Those claws are sharp and they're not shy about using them at 9 months old, but fortunately they were less boisterous. As well as walking alongside them, we could crouch down to stroke them (lots of photos) and even hold their tale like a leash - although they were the boss of course. We did another walk in the afternoon with some older cubs, about 13 months old. However, they were very lazy and kept lying down all the time (apparently lions usually sleep about 20 hours a day). The only time they were really alert was when they heard some of our mates go by on the horse safari. They must have smelled tasty!
Canoeing Jase and I gingerly stepped into a canoe for a lazy cruise down the river. We spotted a fish eagle and had a bit of a Carry On moment, trying to paddle the canoe around to get a decent photo of it. Of course, it flew off once we'd positioned ourselves. We made it back to the camp ok and didn't drift off down the river.
Elephant Ride (of terror) After lunch we were really looking forward to our elephant ride. Tombi, our lady heffalump, stood 10 feet high and weighed 3 tons.
Upgraded Tent
This is a proper tent! The guide walked her to a set of steps, which you climb to hop onto the elephants back. We thought we would have one each, but ended up together with Reason our guide on Tombi. As she walked away from the steps, the terror kicked in with a vice-like grip. Much like the grip Rach had on Jase, and Jase had on Reason. Just a few steps later, mischievous Tombi decided to have a munch on a tiny tree, low down of the floor. Instead of just lowering her head, she decided to lean completely over, leaving the three of us clinging on for dear life. We were seconds from falling off her back. Scary stuff! To make matters worse, part of the course involved going down and up a steep ditch, and you had to lean back and then forward to stay on. We've done some scary things but this was truly terrifying! We got off with jelly legs and gave her a feed, tickling her tongue (which was soft and slimy) and thought "thank you Tombi, but never again!"
Big Daddies Later in the afternoon we had a tour of the Breeding Programme. Antelope Park's primary focus
Chilling on the patio
Overlooking the lake from our private patio outside the tent is to breed and reintroduce lions into the wild to increase lion numbers, as they are a threatened species. The lions we visited in the enclosures were huge and there was only one small fence between us and them, so you could touch them (if you didn't mind losing a finger). These lions had hand-raised and cannot be returned to the wild, but these were far to big to go in and play with. These were the guys that you could hear moaning and groaning during the night, which was quite an eerie sound.
The Night Stalk This was the real highlight that we had been looking forward to all day. We went out in two open game trucks after dark, equipped with huge spotlights. We drove over to release the three lionesses who hadn't eaten for four days, so were pretty ravenous. The purpose of the night stalk is to train the young lions to hunt for themselves. We followed them into the game park, so the trucks effectively become part of the pride. After only about 10 minutes, the lions spotted an impala and gave chase. This was really exciting, bumping over the rough terrain at full
Canoeing down the river
Quiet few hours paddling down the river doing a bit of twitching! speed, trying to keep up with them. Fortunately for the impala it managed to leap out of the way into the bush - impalas can really shift when they need to! After a rest, we carried on through the bush. The lions were close to the truck when we happened to scare a young impala, which started to run. One of the lionesses spotted it and gave chase. As the impala jumped, the lion sprang up and swiped it with it's right paw, bringing it down. Then she sunk her teeth into it's neck, the theory being to kill the impala before feeding. However, these lions were a bit inexperienced and impatient to eat, so the other two started to tuck into the soft, fleshy belly while it was still dying. Bearing in mind we are pulled up right next to the action, about 6 feet away, you could really hear the impala groaning in agony as it's stomach and intestines popped out! It took about 6 minutes for the poor impala to die and about 45 minutes in total for them to finish their meal. The only real stomach churning bit was when one of the lions started scoffing
Lion Walk
Jase taking a lion walkies! the colon and bits of poo oozed out of the lion's mouth, and the lion's expression suggested she wasn't enjoying that bit too much. Jase cringed slightly when one started crunching away on the skull - great sound effects! We were really lucky to witness the kill, because the statistics say only 10 in 1 million game viewers get to see a lion kill and luckily we managed to capture most of the action on film. So you guys have got that to look forward to when we get home!
Elephant Training In the morning before we left Antelope Park we went to the Elephant Training. This was quite hilarious, because the keepers command the elephants to perform silly military style training exercises. Then they play a bit of football and we had the opportunity to stroke and feed them, and sit on their knee. Rach faced her fear and sat on the back of one again, hanging onto it's ears for dear life. A nice end to a fantastic experience at Antelope Park!
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Debra
non-member comment
Vegetarian, thank you.
I'm so glad I am a vegetarian after reading about the lion kill. It sounds truly horrible to me - vegetarian semi-budist type wuss and all. What an adventure though.