Amazing Safari Experience with Lions
John P. Strelecky
Ever since I was a child I have wanted to go to
Africa and see the animals. When I planned my first trip to
Africa, I practically refused to think about seeing
anything else until I had been on safari.
During our first adventures out on the savannah, my wife
and I had an amazing experience with lions that exceeded everything I had
imagined. It took place in a
location called Kruger
National Park. Kruger is part of the South African park
system, but to put it in perspective, the total size of the land is larger than
the country of Holland. Within the park are thousands of
kilometers of roads, some paved, but mostly dirt. For five days we spent our time sleeping
in a tent, eating out of a cooler, and driving in our car looking for
animals. We spent about 9 hours per
day driving, but when you are doing it, the time doesn't feel like a 9 hour
driving trip because your day is constantly being broken up by game
sightings. After you have sighted
something, you sit and watch until either the animals wander off, or until you
decide to move on.
Over the course of the five days we saw thousands of
antelope, hundreds of each zebra, giraffe wildebeest, warthogs, hippos, and
water buffalo, about 20 rhinoceros, 80 elephant, 2 leopards, 9 lions, and a mix
of other animals including crocodile, wild dog, jackal, and hyena. For almost every species we had an
opportunity to park the car, and watch the animals move to within 20 feet of
us. Sometimes, as was the case with
a giraffe that walked right next to the car, we could have reached out the
window and touched them.
The highlight of the trip came on the fourth day. We had decided the night before that
since we had not seen any lions, we would get on the road at first dawn and
focus strictly on lions. This meant
not slowing down or stopping to watch other animals along the way. We kept a slow pace of 20km per hour and
although we stuck to our strategy, we still saw immense amounts of game. By 6:15 we hadn't seen any lion, so we opted for our secret
strategy to call out the animals, and sang a chorus of "The circle of life" from
the lion king movie. Wouldn't you
know it, but it worked.
Around 6:30 I
spotted a giraffe about 300 yards away.
Normally this isn't worth stopping for because since you see them 10
yards away, there isn't any point in watching from such a far distance. Plus, our strategy was to just look for
lions. This one was acting very
strange though, it wasn't grazing, it was stamping and making quick turns, and
it was bending its neck all the way to the ground, all of which are very
non-normal behavior for a giraffe.
Still, after we watched for about 10 minutes we couldn't see what was
making it antsy. The grass was
about 3 feet high, and so we could only see the upper 4/5ths of its body.
We started to drive, and spotted a jackal, which was
another new species for us, coming straight up the road toward the car. He totally ignored us, and walked right
by the car at a pace fast enough we couldn't get a picture, and kept going. We opted not to follow him and continued
driving. About 1k farther down the
road Xin spotted a large male lion.
He was close enough to see with the naked eye, and within great binocular
viewing distance. He was walking
the opposite way we were driving, so we kept backing up, which worked to our
benefit because as we backed up we went up the incline of the road, and so we
had better views of him in the tall grass.
We kept backing up to stay in front of him, and he kept walking. We did this routine about 5 times. During all of this, he was not running,
but walking very quickly and in a determined fashion. He definitely wasn't concerned about the
car or us. After our fifth back up
it was obvious that he was going to cross the road. We stopped, and as we watched while he
got closer, I looked out my window and realized that we were right back to where
the giraffe was acting agitated, and she was still there and still looking
agitated.
The male lion crossed about 5 feet in front of the car,
and took off through the grass toward the giraffe. We thought for sure he was going to go
after the giraffe, but then he cut out of the grass and into some small trees in
a different direction. We started
scanning with our binoculars to try and find him and as I swung from the trees
to the giraffe, I saw a female lion moving, and then I saw her leap. This scared away the giraffe, which ran
about 50yds to a different set of trees, and stopped. We couldn't see anything for about a
minute, and then we noticed 4 large hyenas walking down the road behind us,
coming toward the car.
As I was watching
them, Xin spotted the male lion coming out of the small trees he had gone into,
but he was walking strange. At
first we thought the giraffe had injured him, but as we watched we realized that
he was carrying something. As he
got closer we saw that the female lion was with him, walking about 20 yards
behind him, and that what he was carrying in his mouth was a dead baby
giraffe.
He kept walking toward us, and passed within 10 feet of
the back of the car, dragging the dead giraffe by the neck. The weight of the kill was forcing him
to walk slowly, and because he was getting tired he would walk about 20 yards,
then stop, then walk again, then stop.
Each time, the female would stop about 20 yards behind him. After he passed behind us, we backed up
the car a bit so we could see where he went. He stopped in a small bush a bit off the
road, and the female stopped less than 5 feet from the car, put her head down
and rested while he rested. At this
point we had the female right next to us, the male on the other side of the road
with the baby giraffe kill, and 4 hyenas and the jackal we saw earlier sitting
behind the car waiting to see if they can steal the kill.
This was beyond discovery channel. When you see it on TV it is
amazing. When you see it in person
it is something altogether different.
You are struck by sorrow for the baby giraffe who we think was literally
just born, which is why the female was bending down, to lick it clean, sorrow
for the mother who carried the baby for so long only to have it killed so
quickly after it was born, amazement that the lions somehow communicated with
each other across greater than a kilometer of distance that they needed each
others help, and a little bit of fear at just how deadly and non-caring the
world of these animals is.
We watched the lions and hyenas until they had made their
way into the woods on the other side of the road. The whole experience lasted about 30
minutes and we were able to capture the entire sequence with digital pictures,
including the male carrying the dead baby giraffe.
About John P.
Strelecky
John is the best selling author of numerous books
including Life
Safari. He has done many long duration adventure trips including a nine
month, around the world, backpacking excursion with his wife, which encompassed
almost seventy thousand miles. For
more about John, visit www.bigfiveforlife.com.
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