Today we slept in, going to breakfast (cold sausages, of course) at 8:45. We ate slowly and wandered around, sitting outside until it was almost 11 – Chimwemwe was going to come pick us up. Checking out took forever because they had to go get me a refund from another building – I had prepaid for Saturday night back when I was in the US, but we had decided to spend it at Protea Safari Hotel! Craig and Chimwemwe had found it after another one had fallen through.
So, we went to their apartment, which is very nice and full of light. Outside on the grounds of their complex are many vegetable gardens – Chimwemwe says that people work on them or hire people to maintain them for them, but that it costs about as much as buying vegetables at the markets. I like them – we wouldn’t be allowed to have them where I live. A bunch of little boys were running races on the grounds – no shoes on, and it’s really cold! Low 60’s or high 50’s, I think.
One note – I’m writing this as the power flicks on and off – load shedding is a curse!
Craig came home, and we drove off through the city towards the safari lodge. As we drove out of the city, we saw lots of cement houses and thatch huts, scrap-built stalls selling things on the sides of the road, people walking, sitting, running along the roads, and then finally long stretches of land with small clusters of huts and houses – farmsteads and tiny roadside villages. The land is arid but not desert – it’s a lot like the area outside of Austin, Texas. I could see masses of smoke way off in some directions, but not enough to be a brush fire and too much to be a regular house or cooking fire. No idea what that could be.
We came to a dirt turn-off for Protea, with a bunch of people standing or sitting around it. I’m not sure why – maybe a minibus stop? – they didn’t have anything to sell and didn’t beg. We bounced and bumped down the road in Craig’s truck, on the left side of the road, seeing lots of scorched and burned stubble under the trees. Chimwemwe said that they burnt the underbrush off because of tics – tics in Africa are not nearly as dangerous as tics in North America, but they’re still bad.
The hotel is really nice – with lots of little individual “chalets”, each with a thatched roof. The main eating area also has a thatched roof, with no walls – we walked through on our way to the chalets. Ruth and I each have one, and Craig and Chimwemwe another. There were water buffalo and kudu calmly eating the lawn – very cool to see. Luckily, it cost approximately the same as our original hotel had – perfect.
We met back at the main lodge at 14 for a safari ride, on a jeep through the range nearby. It was odd – I didn’t see any fencing anywhere, but the animals were definitely part of Protea. Maybe they were just all native to the area, which was very populated – I didn’t think to ask.
We drove along a small lake, finally stopping at a big enclosure – an acre, they said. Lions! There are a few animals that are kept as pets at Protea, and these lions are on permanent loan from Munda Wanga, the zoo/wildlife sanctuary in Lusaka. There are four – parents and a son and daughter. They have to lock the father and the son up on alternate days – they can’t tolerate each other. The father is sad – they had to neuter him at some point, and he lost all of his mane. The cage is not good – it’s small and all concrete. They let us crawl in to see the father on his day in the cage. He growled and snarled at us – I would have too, I suppose.
However, as bad as the cage is, the enclosure is great – it has hills, trees, lots of plants, and it’s all natural looking. The lions that are outside seem to be fairly content, and they’re all a good size and have healthy looking (if they were dogs or cats) coats. If the father and son can’t be together without fighting, at least each has equal time outside. The driver told us that we could come at seven the next day to watch them feed the lions their breakfast – we definitely plan to do so. He says that they put the chickens up in trees to give them something to do.
The first thing I saw once we drove away from the lions were more of the big black crows with the white chests that I’ve been watching at Mulungushi. Then we started to see the animals – many kinds of antelope, kudu, shy hartebeasts, zebras, sables, and more. Some stood, used to seeing jeeps, and others bolted. The hartebeasts were very shy, apparently – they ran right away.
There were large groups of guinea hens, all of them running like herds of big gray dustbunnies away from us. I don’t care for guineas normally – traumatic chasing experience as a child – but I liked seeing the big groups of them safely on the ground. There were also lots of bright yellow birds – I couldn’t get a picture of them, but Ruth says that people eat them, like doves, I suppose. They’re about the same size. Her mother used to cook and sell them, anyway.
We stopped the jeep near some men who were digging – I thought to talk to them. Then Ruth said to look – there was an elephant in the trees, and she turned and came to the jeep! This elephant, a young one, only 17, was one of a few animals that were kept more or less as pets at the lodge. She came right up to the jeep, and we got down and went over to examine and touch her. She was very patient, one of the men who had been digging feeding her sugar cane and tree fungi to bribe her. She was very warm, and she had stray hairs and wrinkles all over – I hadn’t realized that they had such long eyelashes. I fed her a piece of sugar cane. 
She put out her trunk to sniff and feel my hand, too – very interesting.
I really liked the elephant. I was wondering if she might be lonely; elephants are very social herd animals, but they said that they’re working on getting a male of the same age. I wonder if a female might not be a good idea, too – if I remember correctly, they usually spend a lot of time with other females.
After seeing many more kudu, we drove back to the lodge. Craig went to change, and the three of us sat on loungers near the pool to talk and sunbathe – it was in the high sixties. There were some little red spotted deer-like antelope wandering through the bushes, and also one lone kudu.
The kudu was funny – he was trying to steal from a guest’s plate at the picnic tables on the other side of the pool, and a waiter chased him away. About fifteen minutes later, a cook came out and gave him a big plate of bread. That same waiter came up the path and kept having to bang a big tray to keep the greedy kudu away – the waiter looked disgusted. Then the same cook came out and gave the kudu MORE bread – at this point the three of us agreed that this was bad and unhealthy, and no wonder it was trying to steal. The small red antelope tried to get some too, but the kudu head-butted them away – they kept trying to sneak back, though. Ruth said that the cook saw some women and wanted to impress them. He impressed us alright, but in a negative way.
We met back up for dinner, which was a grill (although they called it a barbeque). It was a very cold restaurant, as it had no real walls, but they had those tall gas heaters that you get on patios and loggias – the ones that start up with a big gout of flame and then die down. They’re very effective, but not as picturesque as the baskets of charcoal from the Cattleman’s Grill. It was a nice dinner, with a wonderful cream soup to start and crème caramel to end – excellent food to end a very nice day.
