johannesburg: lion park

The guys were dismayed when they looked at our work schedule for the week we were going to be in South Africa. We had pilot and other interviews lined up back to back every single day that they didn't even have time for smoke or pee breaks. And I was crowned the worst slave driver ever (cos I was the one who did the schedule, oops).

"Jac, we really cannot come all the way here and not go anywhere or see anything besides the airport and the hotel! Can you please squeeze half a day out for us to just do a quick walkabout? I don't mind having to work through a night if I have to!"

So. The amazing slave driver did wonders and voila! we had half a day. (And it was payback time the following day haha)

First, we went to Lion Park, a game reserve just 5min drive from our hotel.




We saw a lot of these shanty towns everywhere as we drove along.




As we entered the park, the toilets were the first thing we saw.




Then we saw the cubs. We got up close and played with the cubs!!! But this particular one slept on and refused to play with me.




I expected them to be really small, like puppies or kittens. But they were 4 month old cubs and bigger than an average full grown dog. Look at the below pic, it's as big as a 5 year old kid I think.






Then I went to buy a pack of dried food thingy and fed a giraffe! I screamed at the first attempt when its almost black and very slimy tongue wrapped around my entire hand. Just check out the random strangers standing around me laughing at me. So embarrassing.






He is such a gentle giant...






And this is so funny... they were assessing each other. And at one point, the giraffe started running away from him. The more the guy followed him desperately trying to feed him, the faster the giraffe walked away. There must be some bad odor oozing out from this guy haha.




Then we did a drive around the entire game reserve. There were lots of signs warning us to STAY IN THE CAR. The animals were allowed to roam freely. The cheetahs were fenced in though. I didn't manage to get a good close up shot of the beautiful cheetahs...




We saw lions. Huge lions. Just metres away from our car.




So. Having fulfilled our desire to see some lions, (but we didn't get to see any elephant herd!) we left the Lion Park. We spent only about close to 2 hours in the park, with about half an hour spent on getting souvenirs for the peeps back home (we figured we wouldn't have time to go shop for gifts elsewhere).

We did check out one more place, the Chameleon Village. I will write about it in another entry.