During our travels in Africa, we visited Antelope Park (http://www.antelopepark.co.zw/) in Zimbabwe. Located just outside Gweru, the 3rd largest town in Zimbabwe, Antelope Park is a must see if you're coming to Zimbabwe. They say that you've got to see Victoria Falls when coming to Zimbabwe but hot on the trail of that is Antelope Park - you could spend weeks here quite easily, there is so much to do and see here - be sure to bring your cameras, its amazing. In fact, you could say that Antelope Park is what got Helen and I out travelling round the world.
Helen was thinking about leaving her job and her plan was, in between jobs, she would do some volunteer work. She'd done quite a bit of research in to this and was seriosuly considering it and had come across Antelope Park in her research. You could spend several weeks here, helping them research the lions and helping out on the rehabilitation projects they have going on here. Antelope Park is about all sorts of animals but it was the lions that Helen was particularly interested in.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was going to join her on 2 weeks holiday whilst she was out here when it suddenly dawned on us that we could both do something like that, then it got expanded to "lets travel to Africa for 2 months", then, well, "we could just go over to Nepal aswell whilst we were doing Africa" and before you know it, the plan was to go off travelling round the world. And we owe it all to Antelope Park!
Anyway, whilst at Antelope Park, one of the must do's is the walk with the lion "cubs" - this conjours up all sorts of images of fluffy little bundles of joy. We started off just walking out into the plains with a couple of guides. They explained that as part of the rehabilitation programme, they like to walk with the cubs to get them used to going out in their pride, we would be part of their pride today. We got so far and then saw our cubs, 3 of them, come running towards us. They looked like fully grown lions! All sorts of nightmares went through your mind at this point - had they let out the wrong lions? were these just 3 wild lions? were we breakfast for these 3 lions? etc etc. This was very scary as they came running at us. The guides were great, told us not to panic and we all calmed down. Besides we’d been given a stick each to pat the lion on the nose when they give us a “naughty look”. “When will we know what one of those is?” we asked, “oh, you’ll know” they said.
Their names were Phyre, Praise and Paka. They were about 18months old, stood about 1 metre high and nose to tail tip about 2.5 metres long. They were gorgeous.
The lions came amongst us and were just roaming free, just left to their own devices. At once point a lion lay down and we could crouch down (but not sit so you could get away quickly) next to it, that was amazing!
You were always on your guard, these were wild lions that were being rehabilitated to be let out into the wild, they weren't pets. At one point when we crouching by one of the lions it moved one of its paws a little quickly, we were up on our feet as quick as a flash. Their pads are enormous and they have claws!
Another lion got up a tree, almost on cue for a photo call and just lay in the tree with its front legs just resting over the branch of the tree – a perfect photo opportunity. It took the guides about 10 inutes to get her out of the tree. Volunteers were recording the behaviour of these 3 lions, whilst out on the walk all the time, what they ate, did, etc ready for their release.
Then towards the end, so that to leave us in no doubt whatsoever, they started to have a little fight over a sod of grass. The roars were real and very loud. They were so quick with their legs to hit each other on the nose – we had been sat next to these just 10 minutes before and that could easily be our forearm they were lashing out at. It was truly an amazing experience, wild lions just walking around the group, fantastic!
