Antelope Park

This place is totally amazing, it is a beautiful campsite with horses, lions, elephants and free tea and coffee... I know this bit doesnt sound that great but really you learn how to latch on to freebys! So we were all overdosing on the free tea. Unfortunately everywhere does have its faults and Anteope Parks was that it FALSELY advertised English breakfast- no bacon or sausage but mince- it worked in some sick way! There was a cute little foal and cats running around all the time too. This place was ran like clockwork so everything was perfect! (Very different to the Africa we are used to)

Sign Us Up for Everything...

As soon as we arrived a guide came and gave us a big talk and showed us a dvd on what activities we could do there. He was great- so we signed up for horse riding, lion walk, cub viewing, cub and lion feeding, breeding programme, swim with elephants, elephant ride and John (or should I say Ray Mears) signed up for the bush walk. Everyone was on a real high that night and couldn't wait to get up and go play with the lions the next day!

Rise and shine its lion time!

The first thing we did was the lion walk- literally you walk alongside three lions! We had a safety brief in the morning where you were given a stick/ twig and if the lion got "too playful" (what???) you had to say in an assertive voice "no" and point the stick at it! Oh and you weren't allowed to wear red! Hmm... we didn't exactly feel like our safety was too guaranteed and a week earlier one of the lions got excited and jumped at a womens bun in her hair. Apparently it has been publicised in the press back at home- so google it! Then we met our 3 lions they were 16 months old and were about waist height. At first they just kept flopping around on the grass and didnt participate in the walk but then eventually they started to run alongside us. You were allowed to stroke them- it was so much fun patting lions and scratching them behind their ears. They were dead playful and were climbing in the trees and running in the river. We were devestated when the walk finished but we have some excellent pics!

We then had some lunch (lots of tea and coffee) and then it was cub viewing time. This bit was my favourite- you went on a little walk to where the 3 s's enclosure was, they were 11 weeks old and had only been showed to the public for a week- there names were Swahili, Shara and Setonga (3 s's) and they were the cutest things in the world! They were still quite unsure of people so you had to be very slow and careful around them, there was only me Gabby, John and our guide Roy with them and we were stroking them and playing with twigs with them, it was absolutely fantastic!

Oh no disaster strikes!

Later that day we had our elephant swim but disaster struck minutes before we were due to leave... we dropped the camera and it broke! We were gutted and delayed the swim to the next day to see if we could fix it. There were lots of helpful people around who tried but it wouldn't work! Luckily we lent Jodie's spare camera and just used her internal memory and none of our pictures were damaged. Our camera has now been fixed- it took a man at Vic falls ten seconds to have a play around and he didnt charge us- woo hoo! Anyway back to Antelope Park... later that day after much sulking about the camera we went for our Elephant ride. You are so high up on top of the elephant and have to get on to a mounting platform to climb on. Our Ele was called Tombi and our guide was called Crispen, I sat in the middle and held on for dear life to him and John hung on to me. You were on for about 45 mins and walked through some lovely landscape. When we went down hill it was a bit bumpy and Tombi kept stoppin for some food and Crispen was laughing at me as I was suffocating him because I was squeezing him dead tight! John was saying he would have to take him to the hospital because his ribs were broken- whoops... but it's a long way to fall off! This was an amazing day all round and we finished it off by having a few drinks and eating some lush food before retiring to our tent!

The following day we saw the lion and cub feeding, which involves huge slabs of meat (a donkeys head in one case... not the most pleasant site... we have grown to love donkeys as there are millions in Africa!) It was great watching the feeding as the meat is put at one side of the huge enclosure just in front of where you stand and the lions race down from the other end and then have a bit of a tussle over the meat, you wouldn't want to get in the way of them!

Swimming with Elephants and almost in Puddles!

Then that afternoon we went on our Ele swim, there was me, John our guide and our ele was called Chimbi. John had to go in the middle this time as apparently girls find it easier to stay on and I would have to take his weight if he came off! So off we went plodding into the water then the guide shouts things at Chimbi and she started to swim and play under the water. It was so much fun, really hard to stay on and at some points Johns whole head was under the water! Chimbi stayed under the water for ages and seemed like she was having lots of fun. She kept her trunk out though!John almost came completely off and nearly yanked my arm out of the socket in the process of getting back on! We loved swimming with the elephants.

Later that day we tried to go for a horse ride but it started raining and thundering about 5 minutes into the ride so all of the horses did an about turn and started running back to the stables... not too succesful! John had agreed to keep Roy's passport in his pocket as it was raining and when we jumped off the horses he realised it was missing from his pocket... oh dear. So me, Roy and John had to go looking for it in the storm! It was worrying because some of the puddles were really deep and we thought we would have to go swimming in them but then we found it... phew I've never seen John look so relieved!

That evening we spent lots in the gift shop and we all went for a meal in the restaurant- which we basically treat as eat as much as you like and ha steak and then chicken and a cake- yummy! We also fell in love with this baby Impala called Impy they had there, she was so cute and sucked on our thumb when you stroked her!

We spotted a Leopard- Not Quite in the Wild though!

The next day we left Antelope Park ad headed elsewhere in Zimbabwe. Our first stop off was at Chipangali, which is an animal orphanage. It had some wicked animals, though we were slightly jaded with the lions as we were now pro's with waking with them! We saw a leopard for the first time, and we never got to see one in the wild so she was lush to see. We also saw lions being fed again. They had this tiny monkey which they had hand reared and was only a few weeks old- she was the cutest thing ever! We got to play with a little bush buck too who chomped on your clothes, the litle devil put holes in my shorts, but at least I can show my war wounds of being savaged by a bush buck! On a slightly less cuter note the warthogs kept charging the fence at us! My favourite animal of the day was a Battle Bird, he looked dead funny and did this random dance, it looked like a war dance where he raised his wings, stomped his feet (which were poorly from landing on an a live electricity wire) and shook his head- he was class! We also saw the crocodile getting fed the most disgusting green meat- I definitely don't ever want to catch a croc on a bad day!

I've had the Time of My Life...

That night we stayed at a lush hostel(had our own room!) and everyone ate meatloaf with crunchies and chomps for desert and sungalong to dirty dancing! It was brilliant! Though I think some of the boys might disagree! Then again it has been that long since we watched tv they would be pleased with anything!