July 27, 2009 Last weekend was amazing. We started out on Saturday at the Mukivisi Woodlands park at Cheetah Day. This park is located about 5 minutes from our house. Cheetah day has been planned for some time, before we even left Virginia and we have all been looking forward to checking it out. There were a few craft tables set up and the kids had no trouble finding stuff to spend their allotted $5 on. Charlotte has taken to collecting beaded animals and Lucas is always on the lookout for anything rhino. There werealso several information sites set up and running most of the day were lectures on cheetah conservation in both English and Shona. It wasn't crowded, but there were lots of folks there. The Cheetahs, who had been human raised but by no means tame, were located near the viewing platform. We waited in a small queue, wiped our hands down with babywipes to get all scent of food off our hands and the next thing we knew we were touching cheetahs! It was exciting and scary. The cheetah's were much larger than I imagined, quite tall and just big. One was a little skittish and the handlers kept having to put him back in the truck to settle. Charlotte stroked the other and he started to purr, no little house cat purr mind you, this cat sounded like a truck starting up. Lucas had to wait at the gate for us as he was deemed too small and prey like to be around these cats. First amazing African experience.
Sunday we decided to head out to the Lion and Cheetah park located just outside Harare on the road to Bulawayo. This is a very unassuming place, but boy do they have some great animals. We learned later that it is one of the few lion breeding facilities in Zimbabwe and have more than 50 lions at any given time.
We started with the drive through the lion park, a dirt track through about 10 acres of open land. We drove about a bit and then all of a sudden there were three male lions lounging off the side of the track no more than 5 feet from our car. We didn't seem to bother them at all and we assume they are used to cars. They were amazing. We continued on and found to females and two teenage cubs sitting on a rock outcropping. As we approached one of the females leaped off the rock and walked purposefully toward our car. We were all a little scared. She stopped about 3 feet from the car and sat down to observe us. Gave us a few really impressive yawns to, no doubt, show us her teeth. We then watched the cubs tumble around and play as the lady lions dozed, keeping one eye on us all the while. A few more lions rounded out our drive through the park and we exited to the "prey" side of the drive. Upon entering the next section we saw immediately a half dozen zebra grazing including a young foal, a couple of Eland and some other smaller gazelles otherwise known as DLC (Deer Like Creatures). I am going to have to get an African wildlife book to keep track of all the animals we are seeing.
After the driving tours we stopped at the main area sort of like a small zoo, but not like any zoo I had been to before. We were introduced to our guide Rodney, a lion trainer, who had worked at Lion and Cheetah park for many years. He lead us to the great galopogas turtle, Tommy, who was out wandering around the grounds. Rodney said that Tommy was over 300 years old and probably would live a few hundred more. Pretty amazing when you think about it. Tommy has a large round house on the grounds that he calls home. Next stop the Nile Crocodiles, these guys were huge and very scary looking. It was a cool day and all the animals were quite active. We got to see on of the Crocs walk around a bit. The next pen had an albino croc who was also walking around. We continued on to the first of many lion enclosures and by enclosure and mean a chain link fence with absolutely no set back. Rodney knew all the animals and called them to the gate were they rubbed his hands. We stood well back.
The next small pen had about 7 baby lion cubs from about 3 months to 7 months old. They were adorable. For $3 per head you can go in the pen with the baby lions and play with them. We, of course, did just that. Rodney explained that the lion cubs are removed from their mother's at about 4-6 weeks to begin their acclimated to humans. He said removal any later would create a more unpredictable lion and not one that could be used safely in their breeding program. The cubs were amazing. They were a little timid at first, but soon warmed up to us. Very cat like in their behavior but much larger and with absolutely enormous paws. One of the young ones took a liking to Lucas (who is very prey like with his small size, high pitched voice and jerky movements) and proceeded to stalk him around the pen. Lucas kept feeding him sticks to play with and they developed a sort of truce although Lucas did not get out unscathed. The cub did get on swipe in and gave Lucas a small scratch on his hand. Not many kids can say they got scratched by a lion! Charlotte was in heaven rubbing the soft lion belly's and soaking up the info Rodney chatted about. This was quite an experience.
We could have easily ended our tour with the cubs, but there was more to see. The park has a couple of rescued cheetah's in the next enclosure, these two brothers were not tame or human acclimated at all. More lions followed, the park houses the lions by age with an eye toward those that can go to the open enclosure and those used for breeding or those that will be traded to other parks to spead the gene pool around. There was a small black and white animal that I cannot remember the name of, Serval cats and a jackal. All looked very well kept and were quite active. The baboons were literally all over the park, chain link is no barrier for a baboon. Wild in the trees were the vervet monkeys which followed us around to the hyena pen. Hyenas are creepy looking animals and much bigger than I imagined. These guys were not tame or even friendly, according to Rodney.
That pretty much finished our tour of the Lion and Cheetah park. All in all a pretty amazing weekend. Next weekend we will try to make it out even farther to Imare park where there are rhinos and elephants and goodness knows what else. The safari bug has hit us hard! Many many pictures to follow once our internet is up and running!
Love, Shannon
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