January 2014 Logs & Pictures

January 2014 –
This is an account of an encounter with lions, by a French guest, Gratien Marty, who visited with his team in late October, 2013).

THESE WERE THUNDEROUS GROWLS…

Hi Chris,

Please find hereunder a small text about our unbelievable experience.

Thanks again for that Chris and see you soon….

The shortest and hottest safari walk of the world !

Thursday, October 31st, 2013 : French team Gratien-Fanny-Antoine-Caroline-Pablo-Louis

At 4:00 am, while we were deeply sleeping, Chris gave us a call on the talkie walkies, in order to go and find the lions. 2 of us just had the time to wake up and jump on the jeep, and then went for a night drive listening to the growls, and managed to track and see 2 male lions. Back to the camp, as the growls could still be heard, the 4 other members of our team went with Chris and Jay to find those 2 lions. But after many trials in several directions, as it was already 7:00 am, the weather was hot, no way to find the lions any more : they should be sleeping under a tree right now !

So we decided to go for a safari walk. The jeep went back to the camp, and after only a 3-minute walk, Chris told us, very quietly : “make a quick turn and walk very slowly”. Without having seen anything, we just had the time to turn back, when we heard behind us a huge growl. The 2 male lions were only 50 m behind us, they saw us and apparently did not appreciate our walk on their territory. At that moment, it was very hard to keep quiet, we all wanted to run as fast as possible, but Chris stayed calm and keeped walking, repeating those incredible words : “lovely animals … lovely noise …”. Fortunately, the lions did not go further, and stayed under their tree. Their 2 or 3 meter jump towards us, combined with a great growl, was enough to make us go away. We keeped walking and calling Jay and the camp on the radio, who finally arrived with the jeep, but only after severals minutes, which appeared to last a whole life for us !

Back to the camp, we repeated the story together many times, and each time, the most impressive contrast was the difference between how calm Chris had behaved, and how scared we had been. His excellent knowledge and experience of those animals saved us, and we could measure how true was the sentence “whatever you do, never run !” Thank you Chris for this unbelievable experience … Lovely animals !

Regards.

Gratien MARTY

Jan 2014 Pictures

Pictures by Iris Breeman (Toek Toek – the rescued Impala)