His face was entirely golden but for a white muzzle and two lighter yellowish patches just above the eyes, giving the impression of eyebrows set in a permanent frown. A pink nose flecked with black spots sat atop a jet black mouth that hung open lazily, while thick brushstrokes of auburn framed his features perfectly. As he squinted against the late evening sun he looked for all the world as tame and approachable as any house cat, but the merest glimpse of his off-white canines betrayed the true nature of this beast. This is what I had come to see. The most majestic animal on the planet. Panthera leo. The King of the Jungle. And here he was, right in front of me.
Shame it was only on a bloody postcard in the gift shop.
After two fantastic days at Kruger National Park, one of the largest game reserves in Africa and covering 7,332 square miles, we had yet to see any big cats. We'd ticked off three of 'The Big Five' (a phrase coined by hunters which refers to the five most difficult animals in Africa to hunt on foot) in the first few hours. The elephant was the first to greet us as we stopped to watch a solitary male, just feet from the road, bathe himself by drawing muddy water up through his trunk and spraying his cracked-clay skin. His ears wafted gently over his eyes and back again as the trunk weaved it's way around his sun-bleached tusks. We would encounter several more elephants at close quarters over the course of the next two days but I would never tire of sitting in silent awe of these kind-eyed bohemoths.
The buffalo were naturally intrigued by our presence. There is something intensely amusing about seeing an entire herd of buffalo turn their heads towards you, a confused look on each of their faces, with ears and horns that stick out horizontally while the latter meet at the top of the head, giving the impression of a very slick centre-parting and pig-tails. A red bow on either side would not look out of place.
We saw the rhino at the very end of the first day. The low evening sun accentuated the loose folds of his slate grey skin and made the pointed keratin horn at the tip of his nose cast a shadow across his face. This was a White Rhino (not actually white, but so called due to a mistranslation from the original Dutch word wijd, which means wide, referring to it's wide lip compared to the Black Rhino's pointed lip. Don't ever say you don't learn a thing or two reading this blog), usually seen in groups of about 10 - 15 so to see one alone was something of a rarity. Not for the first or last time, I felt truly privileged.
Then came giraffes, zebras, hippos, wildebeest, crocodiles, jackals, hyenas, and baboons. We even met some African Wild Dogs - an extremely endangered species, there are only 350 of them in Kruger, an area one and a half times the size of England, and we saw five of them just basking in the sun at the side of the road. But no leopards, no lions. Until, that is, the night drive.
For a couple of hundred rand extra we were able to clamber in to an open-topped jeep and be taken around the park by an experienced guide to see the wildlife at dusk, witness a stunning African sunset and, hopefully, see some big cats at their most active. It was a beautifully serene evening and the zebra herds, baby giraffes and those magnificent elephants were a photographer's dream in the fading golden light. Then, after an hour or so, the driver came to a halt. Collectively, we looked around for what he might have stopped for, but I could see nothing. Then he said it. 'Lion!' Directly ahead, lazily ambling down the road towards us, was an adult lioness. She seemed unfazed by our presence and didn't break her stride as she got closer and closer to the jeep. Half a dozen cameras clicked and whirred simultaneously as she strolled right up to us, passed with a cursory glance and continued on her way. We followed her for half an hour or so, taking pictures every time she stopped to look over her shoulder at her persuers, each time deciding that they bore her no threat, until she left the road and became lost in the long grass.
At that point I could have gone home happy. Four out of the Big Five ticked off. Only the leopards let me down. Spotty, camera-shy bastards. 'Sod 'em.' I thought, 'That'll do me'. But a couple of hours later, just as we were heading back to base at the end of the drive, we met two more lions. This time they were males, an adult and a juvenile. By now it was pitch black so we were relying on the spotlights, but as they both walked past us just feet from the jeep I could still see their incredible size. Adult males can exceed 39st in weight. They're big. Being attacked by an adult lion would be like being mauled by a very hungry Rik Waller in a wig.
We spent the next twenty minutes watching these incredible animals as unobtrusively as we could. Years ago my grandfather used to tell me the story (completely fabricated, as it turned out) of when he and his three brothers went hunting in the jungle and were confronted by a lion. I still remember to this day his description of looking the lion 'square in the eyes' and 'feeling his breath' on his face. When the spotlight caught the reflection of the adult male's eyes it took me back to that story, back to my childhood and reminded me of happy times with my grandfather. Thankfully, my story doesn't end with cocking a gun and shooting the poor lion right in the head, but then my grandad's generation were a bit less concerned with conservation than ours...
Finally, the two males reached a crossroads where the adult glanced in each direction before emitting an almighty roar. Not the sort of roar Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer would have you believe lions make, more a guttural grunt, but powerful enough that I felt it reverberate in my chest from 50 feet away. They both glanced at the jeep for one last time before disappearing in to the night, and it was then I realised something I should have years ago. It was so obvious I could have kicked myself. It was staring me right in the face.
Lions have the same haircut as Pat Sharp.
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