My favourite place to visit is Africa and one of the reasons I fell in love with Africa happened during my Contiki tour of Zimbabwe in 1998. (If you under 35 years old, I would recommend a Contiki tour anytime. I have done 3 of them and they were all amazing. No, they haven’t paid me to say that.) It was before Zimbabwe fell apart with the actions of its government. The people were very friendly and welcoming. Our tour group had split into cars for an afternoon safari at Hwange National Park. After seeing many wonderful animals, including a Sable Antilope, our car meet up with another tour group coming in the opposite direction. The cars stopped and the guides started to talk to each other in a native language. I don’t know what they said but soon we took off like we were being chased by the cops. We soon arrived at a watering hole. All I saw was the watering hole about 500 meter away and on the other side of the water, between it and a bunch of trees, was a log. The guide pointed across the water and said, ‘There is your lion.’ I did not see it so I said, ‘Where?’ The guide pointed again straight across the water but I still couldn’t see it. He looked at me as if I was blind. This went on for a few minutes until the log decided to move and roared. The log was a female lion! At that distance, I would never have noticed it with its tawny coat if it hadn’t move. It was amazing just to watch it move and roar. It was the only lion we saw on that trip. They are beautiful animals. I also enjoyed boasting to the other car of our tour group that we saw the lion and they missed it. I have work on my humility.

“Can you see the Lion? It’s right there. This is the picture of the watering hole from my 1998 Africa Trip. Learned a very valuable lesson. Never use a disposable camera on a Safari. None of my wildlife pictures turned out. On the good side, it made my good back to Africa in 2004 with a better camera and got some great shots of African wildlife”