Brave Day

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Wake up is at 6am for a 6:30am pickup. The tour is over but I still have another week ahead of me of selfish time. I decided to do a Lion Walk Encounter. Walking with the lions? Really – hell’s yah!

Besides myself, there was a couple from Australia and a bloke from Germany. If I had to guess, we were certainly around the same age. Upon arrival we watched an educational video of the steps involved of introducing cubs into the wild. Usually every other generation of lions is successful as some of the cubs lose their fear of humans. When/if this happens, the lions will never be able to be released as most likely they will be shot if they decide to approach a human even if they just want to say hi.

Afterwards, we learned the Absolutely Things NOT TO DO list. This this was long. We were given sticks as if the lion approaches us we start drawing in the sand or dirt which will distract the cubs. Each cub we were meeting has its own handler; however they are still wild so you never know what may happen. We finally made the trip into the park. There they are – the 3 cubs (2 sisters and a brother). Ummmm – they are HUGE! I didn’t expect lions that actually look like lions… I sorta expected the smaller ones that you see in the videos. LOL. As these cubs were 17 months, they only do this program until they turn 18 months – as that is considered too large and dangerous.

So we all stayed calm as we had to and we started taking our photos. We learned a lot about the lions. We started our walk and whenever the lions allowed, we were able to walk behind them. Sometimes they simply dropped to the ground as they were super lazy. They started to play at times and roll around. Just recently, the male cub started getting horny. He constantly tried humping his sisters – it was hilarious. The females just shooed him off. The handlers assured us they wouldn’t allow any incest so they would stop anything before anything serious happened.

The lions were so cute! They were also a lot of fun to watch. You can tell they are happy animals with a lot of spunk! The handlers joked around a bunch with the lions – you can see they have some special bonds. As much as this is wonderful, these 3 are not being released into the wild. They will most likely end up in zoos as they are considered to be humanized.

This was one of the most memorable and exciting experience I have had in all of my travels. It was magical, frightening and marvelous. I am so happy I had the opportunity to do this!

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Comments

[liliram]

wow
you are mighty brave, lady! i can never find the courage to do that. But happy for you. great photos. great blog.