FURTHER: A TRAVEL BLOG: Hwange National park or the lion sleeps tonight...thank god.

The Landrover bounces down the rough washboard track through a landscape of scrub, barren trees and grass that glows gold in the light of the setting sun. The crescent moon ascends in the east seeming to push the sun in the west below the horizon. We are on safari in Hwange National Park in western Zimbabwe. We have just left one of the few remaining waterholes in this desolate place where we observed hundreds of elephants bathing, drinking and just seeming to have a good time.

A pair of giraffes nervously drink nearby. I say nervously because the only way they can drink is to splay their front legs to get their heads low enough to drink. However, they are remarkably agile in drawing their legs together in a snapping motion to be fully upright in a split second in order to flee any potential predator. A few crocodiles laze on the bank of the water hole only moving when an elephant tromps by.

Our Landrover accelerates, rattling our brains and backsides. Our guide, Andy, promises a treat we will not forget. After about ten miles of this bone rattling ride the sun sets and the sky turns a dusky gold. I catch a whiff of rotting flesh which soon turns to a full on assault on my olfactory nerve. Andy excitedly yells over the rattling of the Landrover, “Smell that? It’s a dead elephant!” I think to myself, “Great! We went all this way to see and smell a dead elephant.” Andy stops the truck and points through the dimming light through the brush at the carcass of a dead elephant. In the dying light the gray mass is barely visible. Then I look over to the other side of the truck and notice a lion lying in the dirt. Andy has seen it too and cautions us to move slowly and not stand up as we are in an open truck and just a small leap away from the lion.

Deb notices several other lions lying a little further back in the brush. In a soft voice Andy tells us that the seven lions have been feeding for the past two days on this elephant. It is unknown if they brought it down or if the elephant died in some other way.

We sit and watch the lions watching us for a few minutes and as the sky begins to darken, Andy says it is time to go. He turns the key in the ignition and only gets the tell tale click of a dead battery. We are miles from camp, it is getting dark, we are in an open vehicle and we are surrounded by lions. What could be better than this? I became even more nervous when Andy pulled out his 416 rifle and cautiously walked around the truck. I wondered what he was doing then saw him pull out the front seat to inspect the battery. Keeping one eye on the lion a few feet away, he removed the battery cables and cleaned them. He reached over to try the ignition and we heard, “click, click,click.” Now I was getting very nervous. Just then the other truck in our safari pulled up.

Note the lion just past the outstretched hand

The other truck had jumper cables and I breathed a sigh of relief, but our battery was so dead it would not start. “Oh, s%^$!,“ I thought. Then, Peter, an Australian on our tour, suggested swapping batteries. (If you remove the battery of a running car, you can put it in the car with the dead battery and start it without the running car dying. This is a good note to remember if you are ever in a similar situation.) When they pulled the battery out of the running car it died. I thought now we are really screwed. Fortunately, the second try was successful. Andy put the two trucks back together, re-sheathed the 416 and as the last light of day faded from the sky, we roared off leaving the seven lions to sleep off their big meal of which, thankfully, we were not a part of.