The Lions

As promised here is the second crazy wild life encounter we had in Kruger National Park.



After the crocodile feeding frenzy we drove to a camp called “Oliphants” to stay the next two nights, and when we arrived we went to check in for our morning hike with a ranger. We checked in and went to sleep so that we could get up at 4:30am for our hike. We met the ranger, hopped in the truck, and drove to the hiking site.

The weather was overcast and moderately windy, so we weren't expecting to see much wild life. But before we even jumped out of the truck we saw a gigantic White Rhino trotting around about 50 yards from us- pretty close for an animal that could do some serious damage to us even being in the truck. We got ready to go and the rangers proceeded to load their large rifles and tell us about how we should be sure to follow them single file (later we found out that the single file hiking was a precaution against one of us stumbling upon a python and getting eaten).

So we took off and about 5 minutes into the hike we found our rhino friend again and he checked us out for a while before spinning around and running off. I will say that for a while we weren't sure if he was going to charge or not, but the rangers assured us the charge would only be a bluff anyways and not to worry- I sure hoped so! As it turned out we just watched and it ran away. It was a very large creature. I imagine that the triceratops dinosaur must have somewhat resembled this beast with its nose horns and everything.

After the rhino we continued to hike down towards a gully wash and you could tell the rangers were talking about something-you just couldn't hear them. We walked maybe another 75 yards from where the rangers had their meeting and all of a sudden we stopped and they pointed at these dust clouds and some lions sprinting away from us towards the creek bed. As we kept watching one of the lions stopped at the base of a large tree and watched us while we watched it. I was actually the first person in line right behind the rangers so I got a great peak at the action. Those lions were as fast as lightening as far as I'm concerned. The rangers said that they saw the lions when they were about 20 yards away from us and that if the lions wanted to they could have been on us in the blink of an eye. Although that has never happened in their experience just that fact got your nerves going. That was the extent of the excitement on the walk, but we had another encounter with the king of the jungle later.

We had just finished watching some hippos and African Fish Eagle's from another wild life blind when we ran into some friends from the morning game walk, and they told us to go check out this elephant with huge tusks down by this particular part of Kruger. We left and actually found the elephant they must have been talking about because this elephant had the biggest tusks we'd seen yet- they were probably 6 feet in length and only maybe 3 feet from the ground.

As we were taking pictures of the elephant trying to push a tree down, we pulled over to the side of the road and rolled both the windows down we usually did. I was positioning myself for a good video shot from the other side of the car from the elephant when I looked back down the road to see a lion running at our car. All I could think to do was put the camera down, sit back in my seat, and yell at Kicker, “there's a freaking lion coming; roll up the windows, both of them!” As Kicker fiddled with the windows desperately trying to figure out how to save our lives by rolling up the electric windows, I got out my other camera and held my breath that the lion wasn't interested in us. Luckily it wasn't and it ran past our car and jumped down the side of the road to the river bed below the road.

Kicker and I looked at each other with wide eyes and began to breath again because this lion literally ran within arms reach of our car. We could have touched the lion as it ran past ,and it scared the snot out of both of us because moments before it came by we were hanging out the window in the way of the lion on the move. We thought we could have died but we later found out that the lion wasn't interested in us.

We looked up the road and noticed some cars stopped, which is usually a good sign that there's something to watch, and we found a lion crouched in the middle of the road obviously on the hunt. It creeped across the road and then sat up like a dog and was looking over the edge of the cliff down to the river below. Kicker looked over the edge from in the car and told me that the lion must be watching and stalking this herd of about 50 impala grazing down there. At that point we knew something cool was going to happen.

The lions started their attack and the impala must have caught on pretty quick because almost before the lion on the road did anything the impala took off running down to where the lion that ran by our car was. The ambush looked like it was set up perfectly for the lions, but in the end they didn't get any kill out of the arrangement. We watched as the lion that passed our car walked back to meet his buddies up the river bed closer to us, but as the lion got to where our car was he decided to come up the river bank towards our car again. As he came up the hill it started its crouching stalk again and was hiding behind a little bush. We looked around and figured it must be hunting this group of guinea fowl just 5 yards below our car. I had the video camera out and I started videoing. That lion looked up at us as if to see if we were ready and then it darted straight at the fowl, and our car consequently, as it dove into the group of fowl kicking up a bunch of dust but not catching any of the birds. The fowl flew away, we got an incredible discovery channel viewing of the hunt, but the lion missed out on dinner. The lion stood there again for a while and looked at our car and then finally went back down the hill to the river bank and lay down on the sand for a break.

Three other lions came to meet it and affectionately nudged him as they came and greeted him and then lay down on the sand themselves to wait for the next hunting opportunity.

It was such an incredible thing to watch and it really makes you appreciate how intelligent these animals are. What incredible creatures! And we were in the right place at the right time yet again. We later found out that some of our friends had been to Kruger 10 times before they saw their first lion and it only took us one visit and we saw an entire hunting sequence- unbelievable!

You guys should all get out to Kruger to enjoy Discovery Channel in real life. We're definitely coming back here before too long. Hopefully some of you will come with us.