24 February 2010
This morning I woke up feeling right as rain, which is more than I could say for Phil who had gotten sick that night. Originally, I had been thinking this was a reaction to taking malaria pills on an empty stomach, but a second person with the same thing had proven me wrong.
I had prayed before I went to bed to be completely cured in the morning, as I did something today that I have longed to do all my life. Walk with lions.
We left early and were taken out the where the ALERT program is run in the national park. Once there we were given a quick briefing on how we should act around the lions, no sudden movements, don’t panic, no dangly objects etc.
We then set off to find our lions in the national park. We found our two seventeen-month-old lions, Tami and Swana lying in the grass. We got to crouch down and pat them, which was amazing, the two lionesses just closed their eyes and enjoyed the attention like normal house cats. The point of the ALERT program is to reintroduce lions into the wild, and walking with them as a pride in the natural habitat is part of that. So that’s what we did, formed our “Pride” around the lions and walked with them in the wild, which needless to say was an amazing experience. The lions even let us walk along holding their tails.
After about half an hour, we got to a clearing and watched the young lions play for a while and then patted them some more, before we walked them back to where we started and then left them. Being to close to such a wild beautiful creature moved me to tears a couple of times and it was worth every cent I had paid to do it. Another life’s dream lived.
We had breakfast at the park and then were transferred back to our camp. I hung around waiting to see if the internet would come online, but alas it never eventuated. Before I knew it, it was time for our elephant ride pick up.
Again, we drove out to the national park and met our elephants. We had to climb up onto a platform to get onto them. I went last and got an elephant called, Mashumbi, the Matriarch and the head of the heard, go me.
Although I had gotten on last, my elephant headed straight for the front and led the way, which I loved. We didn’t keep to any path and scouts went on ahead of us to warn of rouge elephants and other creatures such as rhino and hippo who could disturb our ride. We got the river and to my surprise we had to cross it, which was a lot less scary on an elephant than I would imagine riding a horse.
The ride lasted for about an hour and we went back to the lodge for tea and snack. We sat talking with the game keeper on the lawn in our safari gear for ages. I remember feeling like I was part of some early 1900’s safari party at that point. Somehow the conversation went to Egypt and I ended up telling the circle the story of the mummies curse in the Tutankhamen discovery, which everyone loved. Then the game keeper, who was actually from Zimbabwe, talked about politics and “Uncle Rob” which was all very interesting and a real eye opener.
After the elephants we went back to camp and then went out for our farewell dinner to say goodbye to Tahryn, Damo, Annette and Emmett, who are leaving us at Livingstone. We raced towards the centre of town in crazy Zambian taxis and the group in front passed us whooping. We would have none of that and we got our driver to overtake and gave them the finger, laughing hysterically. When we got to the restaurant, the meal was, I can honestly say, the worst steak I have ever been served and I resented having to pay for it.