Cock's Blog: AFRICA BLOG

Day 10 - Tuesday 3^rd July

In physical pain! Partially from the workout yesterday and partially from this morning’s horse riding! I rode on a cool horse called Jacko – he was a bit lazy and needed the crop but was otherwise pretty well behaved – we definitely bonded! We learnt to walk and trot and we tried to canter but Jacko was far too lazy. It still bloody hurt by the end though! After lunch we went on a horse safari around the park. This time I rode Hwange – a younge stallion who was more obedient but apparently hates other horses so I had to stay at the back. Definitely got dibs on Jacko for the overnight horse safari on Thursday.
Since we’re in so much pain the obvious thing to do next was play football with Sarah for an hour (I managed to kick the ball into my own face and we ended up in hysterics for a while!). I’m pretty knackered, bruised and achey now and hungry for dinner … it had better be something nice!

Me with my favourite boy Jacko <3

Me on Hwange before the bush ride

Day 11 – Wednesday 4^th July

Independence Day for the Americans here so there’s going to be a bit of a party tonight.
Day started with a P’s walk – Paza tried to go for me again. She really is a very special lion!
This morning me, Neeru and Sheran had BPG cleaning, not especially exciting but fun anyway. At 12pm all of us vols got to watch the Big 7 males (Apollo, Achilles, Mambo, Mamba, Kwezi, Phoenix and Penduka) get fed which was craaaazy! The less dominant ones nicked a bit of food quickly and ran off with it but the top 3 dominant ones (Apollo, Mambo and Mamba) lay on the offal growling at each other for ages and fighting over the food – awesome!

In the afternoon us 3 plus Lorna went off fixing boundary fences. Although courtesy of “Africa Time” (you quickly learn that ‘now now’ means in the next 10minutes, ‘now’ means in the next hour and ‘just now’ could mean anytime in the next few weeks!), we didn’t get started ‘til about 2:45pm when we should’ve gotten going at 2:05pm. Wasn’t especially excited about it but it turned out to be hilarious. The fence didn’t need much fixing so we just drove along a really unkempt part of the track looking for parts of the fence to fix and ducking and diving onto the seats of the cruises to avoid being hit by branches. At one point the branches were so low we had to lie down which of course we were all hysterical at.

Finally at 4pm I walked with the L’s – haven’t been with them for a while so that was cool, although they didn’t hunt anything even though impala were really close – stupid shumbas!

Chillaxing with Casper, a very handsome lion at BPG

Mambo (or maybe Mamba, I'm not sure) enjoying some lovely intestines for lunch :)

Laili and Lewa having cuddle times on their afternoon walk

On the look out for game with Lewa

Day 12 – Thursday 5^th July/Day 13 – Friday 6^th July

BEST DAY SO FAR! So I stumbled half sleep out of my room about 6:05am and straight away Dan shouts “LISA! How are you? Hurry up the trucks leaving!” … wha? Apparently I was going out on research and the truck leaves at 6:15. This involves going out with Rae to the Stage 2 release site to see the Ngamo pride which consists of 15 lions - Milo the male, his missuses Kenge, Kwali, Narla, Narnia, Ashanti and Phyre, the first born cub Wakanaka who is 17 months, two 9 month olds called Kora and Karnissa and finally two 8 month olds called Anulpa and Amadi. It was incredible to be so close to probably the nearest thing to wild lions I’ll ever be – the cubs have never had human contact so are pretty much completely wild. They mostly just lay around sleeping; the cubs played for a while then the whole pride joined together which apparently we were very lucky to see. We then just sat and watched the cubs suckle and the adults chill out for a while.

Wakanaka - the first born cub to the Ngamo pride who is now 18months old

Anopa and Amadi suckling

The stunning lead male, Milo

After breakfast we did enclosure cleaning that had a bit of rush to pack everything for overnight safari, which was the absolute highlight of my 2 weeks so far. There were 10 of us volunteers, plus Matt the Animal Planet cameraman, the stable guys Andy and Joe and their dogs. I got the lovely Jacko horse again so saddled him and put his harness on and we all set off around 3pm. It was amazing and Jacko was really good: trotted and even cantered a bit when I wanted him to – I got praised for my good control of him – I AM HORSE MASTER! Haha! Anyway, we got really close to zebra, impala, kuda and I finally saw a herd of wildebeest which we chased around and may have caused a slight stampede! We got to ride through water too – sweet! We stopped for a break half way to the “campsite” and me and Jacko shared a coke … seriously love that horse – Andy said he’d sell him to me for $400 … tempting! We rode into the sunset which was an awesome sight and arrived at the camp about 5:30pm. It was so much better than I expected – they had camp chairs set up around a fire, a full on dining table set for 12 with lamps, plates, glasses etc., and finally mattresses and our bedding ready for us to sleep on. We made up a little paddock for the horses and put their coats on for the night.

Dinner was incredible! Mr. Conolly’s (the founder of Antelope Park) own chef cooked for us. We had fish on a salad bed with white onion sauce for starters, stuffed beef and chicken in a salsa sauce with homemade potato wedges and vegetables for main and a yummy banana cheesecake for pudding. Totally worth the $80 we paid!
Post dinner we all sat around the fire listening to music and drinking beers under the millions of stars until midnight.

Woke up the next morning having slept surprisingly well considering there was no tent and it was freezing cold! I did have thick socks on, 3 jumpers and a hat … and a duvet and a blanket so I was prepared! We were awoken by the sun rising at 6:30am to find that the horses had gone! Andy had let them out to graze but they had other ideas and wandered off into the bush! Joe went off to find them while we sat down and were provided with a full cooked breakfast with coffee and toast which distracted us while we waited for one of the guys to go and fetch a cruiser to take us back to camp. Kinda felt robbed of our second day of horse safari so may try and go again next week. I was also quite saddened that Jacko left – I thought we were friends! Regardless of this little hiccup it was still the highlight of my trip so far.
Once we were back, a group of us went to do another workout by the pool – seriously hard work! But fortunately I had the rest of the day to relax, which we certainly did! Well until the big BBQ/bonfire out by Bush enclosure at 5pm – everyone went and we chatted and drank plenty of cider, as usual! Neeru and I chatted to Jo and Andy , who’re leaving Tuesday (bad times) until they went back to camp and then to Geir one of the Norweigian guys but by 9pm though I was almost falling asleep on the rocks! I think me and Enid actually completely fell asleep at one point – Lorna had to wake us up when it was time to leave. Although as per usual here this was easier said than done: just as we’d all climbed into the back of the truck wrapped in our blankets due to the serious cold we heard the engine rev … and die. After a couple of attempts we accepted the truck wasn’t going to start so we all hopped out and tried push, however a combination of driver Dan being drunk and the truck being on a hill resulted in our efforts failing miserably and so the decision was made to walk back to camp. That’s something you don’t expect to see wandering through the Zimbabwean wilderness – a group of 20+ drunk and tired volunteers all wrapped in blankets!