Lions, lions and more lions…

Posted on December 6th, 2006 by Christelle.
Categories: Africa, Botswana.

I’ve got some more exciting lions stories!!!
I accompanied 2 clients to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve again last week (to help with the cooking). It was an amazing trip; we saw a lot: lots of Oryx, Wildebeest, springboks, steenboks, 8 cheetahs (yes, 8!!!!) and 7 lions.

We found our first 2 male lions during our morning drive. 6 AM, we’ve just stepped in the car and we’ve been driving for 30 seconds when the car stops! There are 2 male lions lying on the road, literally 20 meters from our camp!!! They are so big and beautiful. After 15 minutes of fanatic photography taking, we continue for our drive. Later on, we find another 5 lions lying under a tree: 3 females and 2 males. Lying down and sleeping are a lion’s favourite activities; I can relate to that. I always said that in my next life, I want to be a cat!!! Fanatic photography and we go again… 20 minutes later we found another type of cat lying under a tree…. 5 cheetahs!!!! Oh my god, 5 cheetahs! I’m so excited!!! My finger starts hurting for taking so many pictures. We leave our 5 cheetahs and continue our little drive. We find some very funny Giraffes, some more Springboks, Oryx, and 30 minutes later some cheetahs again! 3 of them!!! Somebody just shoot me now because I don’t think I can survive the excitement and adrenaline rush!!!!!!! When we couldn’t take it anymore, we decided to head back to camp to have a brunch. The 2 lions were gone but we decided to do a quick inspection of the surrounding bushes and YES, here they are… you’ll never guess… they are lying under a tree… 50 meters away from our camp and only 30 meters from my tent. Oh, yes Christelle! That was a good spot to pick to put your tent… between the camp and the lions!!! Anyhow, it’s business as usual in the camp: I’m cooking keeping an eye in the direction of the lions and we have lunch. Around 3PM, we go for another drive, have a little sundowner and we come back to camp for dinner… the lions are gone but they’re probably not far so we move my tent a bit close to the other 2; well I’m not a hero so we put my tent in the middle of the other 2! Personally I thought that up in the tree would have been a better choice. We have a nice dinner, good conversation, sipping wine, etc … then Jeff and Paul, our guides, tell us not to panic and to look behind us because we have some uninvited guests… so I turned on my chair slowly and I’m facing the 2 males lions 15 meters away! Did I faint? I cannot remember… maybe? No, I stayed very cool… amazing, isn’t it? The lions didn’t seem like they were up for trouble; they just walked in our camp, look at us having dinner and stand there. At some point, we were asked to slowly stand up and still slowly walk to the car. So we did just that… Before they joined us, Jeff and Paul took the wine glasses with them! Can you believe those guys?!?!? Here we are, in the safari car, sipping our wine, looking at 2 lions taking over our camp… That’s Africa! Eventually Paul drove the car to push off the lions because it looked like they had decided to spend the night with us J Lions gone, everyone in their tent and sweet dreams… I dreamt of lions that night, incredible, right? The lions didn’t come back during the night, thanks god! That would have been very scary… Those 3 days in the Kalahari were wonderful; I know I said it before but the African bush is an amazing place; you feel a deep connection with nature there; there’s no other place like this in the world.

Another little lion story… I was looking at the camp’s water hole last night. It was full moon so you could see very clearly. There were some zebras drinking, everything was quiet, then the zebras left. Suddenly we saw some shadows sneaking out… Yes, lions! We start counting…1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Waooo amazing all the lions at once (they are 4 females and 2 males around camp). We’re hoping we’ll see some little creatures crawling around because we’ve heard that one of the females have 3 cubs. An elephant appears between the trees and walks to the water holes, the lions flee and we hear the cubs and the mother calling each others; they were hidden under a tree a bit further. Then something catches our eye on the right…. Another lion! And another one! My god, there are 8 lions, not 6! Then we hear 2 male lions roaring further away… Impossible… 10 lions! It looks like new lions have been joining our little group. It could mean trouble because out of the 4 new lions, one is a male. And girls, you know how men are J During the entire night, we hear roaring, and something that sounded like a fight. It was a hell of a night in the bush.

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