Woke this morning at 5am excited for the day ahead. Planned with Laura last night that we would wake with enough time prior to our 6.10am meeting time to get up and do a little straightening of our locks - it seems like weeks since I have had good/normal hair in photos and not had a bandana on, so the early rise was well worth it in my eyes. Donned dark clothes, picked up camera and sunglasses and I was ready to walk with Lions! Yes, you read that correctly, I started today by going walking with 2, 22 month old lions!!! There was a group of about 10 of us. We first got read the 10 commandments:

- Stay alert

- Do not panic

- Do not run

- Do not crouch

- Stand your ground

- Stay with the group

- Do not wear dangly items

- Do not put anything on the ground

- Approach Lions from the rear

- Do not touch Lions face or ears

- Use stick correctly - not for hitting the Lions

If you dared to break any of these commandments, in our guides exact words 'you will die'. Ok, what was that commandment about not panicking?!?

We walked just out of the camp to the Lion enclosure and heard a rumble similar to a V8 engine and we knew that we were in for something exciting. We had a videographer that Tegan had paid to film her experience, our guide Julius and then 3 Lion Handlers. Tegan did dominate one Lion at times which was rather annoying as we had all paid for the experience and there were 10 of us! I am considering doing another walk tomorrow, but hopefully with less people. We all had a stick which we could use to point at the Lion and say 'No' firmly if they had a look of lust/attack in their eyes (thankfully didn't need to use this). The Lions were released from their cage and came bounding towards us, it was at this moment that I realised just how large they are.

At Antelope Park they breed Lions in a 4 stage process with the aim to release them back into the wild. The basic premise is that Lions bred in captivity can not be released into the wild. So the loop hole found is as such:

Stage 1: breed lions in captivity and remove from mother at 3 weeks old. Raise the Lions and walk them twice daily until the age of approximately 2. The humans act as the Lions pride and when they are taken on walks their natural instincts take over and they naturally stalk prey and learn from each other how to make kills.

Stage 2: The 2 year plus cubs are introduced as a pride into a controlled park of about 500 hectares where there is game for them to live on. All human contact ceases. They breed as a pride and the older lions (who were raised in captivity) teach the younger cubs to live in a pride, hunt, and basically survive.

Stage 3: Once the cubs reach maturity they are then removed and put into stage 3 that is an even bigger game area which also has predators like hyena's and they learn to then defend and also steal predators kills. Once the researchers are happy that they know this step they are ready for stage 4.

Stage 4: release into the wild!!

The Lions breed in captivity will never be released into the wild as they have been interfered with by humans and it can not be trusted that they will not seek affection or be a nuisance and cause harm. However the exciting part is that it is their cubs that are the future of lion conservation. There were 200,000 lions in the world about 20 years ago, there are now only 32,000. Sounds like a lot - but think of the gene pool and the way that it is constantly shrinking. There was also originally Lions in every African country, now there are a number of countries without Lions. The charity run by Antelope Park has signed an agreement with Bundi to release Lions into 2 of their National Parks and they are hoping that within 2 - 3 years they will successfully do that and reintroduce Lions into Bundi. It will cost approximately 7 million, the UN has so far granted 4 million to assist this project. It was this knowledge that I paid for my activities knowing that the money is going to a good cause.

So back to the Lion walking… Lions are lazy and sleep up to 20 hours per day, however the trainers are pretty good at making them move, which was lucky. When the Lions first laid down we were able to go behind them, crouch down (as they were still lower than us and we were still the dominant one) and pat the Lion!!! Lots of photos were taken. When I was patting one Lion it decided it wanted to go lick its friend, my hand quickly retracted when I was told 'don't touch her and move back, slowly'. Not sure how calm I appeared but I lived to tell the tale so must have contained my mild panic. We had a few opportunities to have photos taken with them laying down. We then got to walk beside them and pat them and also hold onto their tales as they walked… in a word - amazing!

One Lion found a tortoise on our walk and gave it a crunch and carried it for a while, but neither decided to run for the game around. To be fair I was so in awe of being so close to these massive beasts that I was selfishly happy that they did not want to run and chase other animals or any of us for that matter. We spent about 1.5 hours with the Lions before they were taken back to their enclosure. Today is the last day that these 2 Lions are being walked as they are getting too large to control easily so we were very lucky that we got to walk with them and I feel so glad that I was here for this amazing experience.

Back to camp for breakfast and our Antelope Park Guide Julius came to the truck to let us know that Elephant interaction was taking place at 9am - 10 minutes time. So it was a quick wash of my plate and I was off for some more excitement.

The Park has 4 Elephants that were rescued a number of years ago when there was a drought. The Elephants are tied to a chain on their ankle for 30 minutes per day when they are trained - this was their 30 minutes. The interaction started with a display of how intelligent these massive animals are. There were 3 females and one male. All were aged between 22 and 25 years with the male being the youngest. They have yet to mate, but the Park hopes that now the male is getting larger that this will happen in coming years. The handlers got the Elephants with voice commands only to raise their feet for inspection, raise opposite feet, raise the same side feet, turn left, turn right, sit, stand and stand still enough for the trainer to stand on their back. Each time they did something right they were rewarded with food. Considering an Elephant eats for up to 20 hours per day, it is not cruel to train an elephant in this manner as it actually supplements their diet to what they require to survive. Also as they are so smart it keeps them intellectually nimble and allows the trainers to gauge their mood on a daily basis.

I got to feed maize kernels to an Elephant!! His trunk was a little slimy and the air sucking in was strong. I also got to hold his trunk, pat him, sit on his knee and finally sit on his back. Loved, loved, loved it! Their skin really is thick and it felt like sitting on concrete. Their hair is also really wiry and strong.

So in a nutshell by 9.45am this morning I was in complete awe of my start to the day! More excitement to follow tomorrow with some horse riding amongst the game (if I don't fall off), another Lion walk with some younger cubs, Lion feeding and a night encounter where the Lions are taken out and have a 50/50 chance of making a kill. But more about that in my next update…

Also spoke to an English guy, Dan, today who has been here for 4 years and loves it. He has been to the Thanda game reserve where I am going to spend 6 weeks and spoke very highly of the programme and place and I was pleased to hear that they have the big 5 in the reserve. He also said that the photographer there that I will do my 4 week photography project with is amazing. Can't wait to see the amazing photos that I learn to take with, hopefully, ease.