Lion Park

  Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
Friday, September 26, 2008

We got picked up by Mike from i-to-i in OR Tambo International Airport (Jo'burg), and he took us to the Lion Park. It was already after dark, so the Lion Park was obviously closed, but the gate staff let us through, so we could get to our accommodation.

A big lion

The Lion Park has a camp site with around 5 permanent "luxury" tents (double beds, veranda, barbecue, fridge, etc) and 2 smaller volunteer tents each with 4 beds. We were shown 2 beds in one of the volunteer tents, which would be ours for the night. The 3 other volunteers working with us had already arrived earlier in the day, but had gone to bed because of their long flights. The previous group of volunteers was still there though, but they had all gone out to celebrate as it was the last night for most of them. This naturally meant that they got back to the camp late, and was quite surprised to find other people sleeping in their tents.

The next morning was our first day as volunteers. We had expected some sort of introduction to the Lion Park itself, the staff working there, but more importantly an introduction to the work we was there to do. No one from the Lion Park or i-to-i turned up, but fortunately a volunteer (Leah) from the previous group still had two days left, so she showed us what we were here to do.

Shandor and two of the small cubs

We were disappointed once we found out what our stay as volunteers involved. There was basically two types of chores/work to do; nursery duty and cub world duty. The nursery duty involved making milk bottles for the small lion cubs and hyenas and then cleaning all the bottles and bowls. We were unfortunately not allowed to touch the small cubs nor were we allowed to help feed them. This was incredibly disappointing as this was the sole reason for us coming to the Lion Park. The official excuse was the lion cubs had not had their inoculations yet, and was therefore prone to diseases. This sounded reasonably enough until we found out that until recently volunteers had been able to touch them and that all the staff in the Lion Park right from the manager to the gate keeper could touch and play with them as much as they wanted. It was really annoying to see all these people go in and play with the cubs, while we could not.

Cecilie and two of the big lion cubs

The other type of work was in the "Cub World". Here the Lion Park had 4 older lion cubs (5 months), which we were allowed to touch. We cleaned out their pen in the morning (poop scooping) and changed their water, and we did similar with the 4 months old hyenas. After that we were on ticket and giraffe duty most of the day tearing off ticket stubs and selling giraffe food. We were alternating between the jobs but we also got to go into the older lion cubs to help the staff with "Touch a Cub". All the parks visitors could go into the older lion cubs and touch/pad them, and so sometimes we helped the staff keeping an eye on the feisty little lions, when all the little kids came storming in. This was quite nice even though the cubs were not as small anymore. They were still very cute and funny to play with - though they did bite quite hard.

Alex and one of his babies

There were some nice staff people at the park. Alex, which is the top trainer, was very friendly to us, and he did a lot of nice things for us, which he did not have too. He took us out through the lion camps, where the big lions are kept and got out of the car and played/wrestled with several of the grown lions. They use some of the lions for commercial and movies, and Alex really has a good relationship with most of the big lions.

Leah, Gemma and Christian

Most evenings after finishing work, we would make dinner in the camp site kitchen, and drink a few bottles of really nice South African wine. South Africa produces some truly amazing wine and it also incredible cheap here. Our new favourite red wine grape is the pinotage - impossible not to get a good wine of this. We had quite a few of those and all around 30 rand (approx $4). We wish we could take a few hundred cases of these back home.

The gang of lion park volunteers

We also went to a place called Monte Casino, which is a huge American indoor style casino complex, which had lots of little Italy style streets with restaurants and shops. Here we had a really nice dinner. Cecilie had some massive prawns and Christian got a huge fillet of beef. The beef in South Africa is really nice and there is plenty of it.

A beautiful cheetah

One afternoon Alex took us out to walk a Cheetah called Sabre. He put it on a leash and we went out into a open area, where we then would walk it and take a lot of good pictures of it. The Cheetah was not actually very interested in us, but more in people on bicycles going up the road. They were some distance away, but the cheetah started stalking them and would probably have chased them down had it been off the leash. The Cheetah is the only cat which only hunts during the day, which is why it has the black tear marks under its eyes. These tear marks absorbs the suns radiation and prevents the sun from impairing the cheetah's vision. Besides being a predator, the fastest land mammal in the world and not a "true" cat (because it cannot retracts its claws) it is a very "friendly" animal and have been known to be kept as pets. It purs as a cat when you scratch it behind its ear.

Cecilie is now 30...

Cecilies 30th birthday started with a cup of tea on the bed and a birthday song. Unfortunately she still had to work so she was up and ready as usual before 8am. However during the afternoon she got a really nice surprise bouquet of red roses sent from all her family back in Norway. They were very beautiful and brought a huge smile to Cecilie's face. In the evening we were invited back to Alex's home for dinner. Alex and his son Shandor cooked for us and made us Pap and Buureworst. Alex has a beautiful big house, where he stays with his 3 kids. We spent the whole evening eating, chatting over wine and playing games. It was really nice and a lot of fun. Shandor also showed us his collection of snakes. Cecilie got to hold one, which ended up crapping on her jeans. :)

Another evening we went to the Carnivore restaurant, which was just a short taxi ride away from the Lion Park. There we had a all-you-can-eat buffet. The waiters came with huge skewers of meat; kudo, warthog, zebra, crocodile, beef, pork, and ostrich. All was very tasty and interesting, but warthog was a definite winner - very tasty.

Incredible cute

The most disappointing thing about the experience was the amount we paid, because we found out that none of the money we paid went to the lion park. i-to-i, which is the volunteer company, is actually just a travel agency covering behind a "meaningful travel" slogan. They keep all the money themselves (except a small accommodation cost) - daylight robbery is what it is called. i-to-i should be named you-to-us instead.