Protea Lodge

The kids have been working very hard this week, so we wanted to reward them with a "field trip" to Protea Lodge this morning. Protea Hotel Safari Lodge is located north of Lusaka about 45km. Several people have recommended this to us, and finally we were able to get away for the morning. Unfortunately, we still had to do school when we returned from our trip.

Kelsey counted 8 zebra, but as we were watching we noticed there were more in the background behind the trees.

Male Puku (standing)

Red Hartebeest

Eland - we like his horns!

Male Kudu - this one had a beautiful set of horns, just perfect!

Kudu eating from the tree as the zebra look on.

Our driver stopped for the elephant to enter the road. He was having a snack of "tree branch."

They asked if the kids would like to sit on this 17 year old elephant. So they climbed right on as the rangers fed her.

As soon as the elephant rose up, Kelsey said, "Whoa! This is really high!" The elephant's skin was rough and very wrinkled.

They have a family of 4 lions which are kept in a large enclosure. This one in the forefront is the daddy, then the mother behind him. Notice that the daddy does not have a big mane. He lost it when his son took over. You will see the son in a picture below.

This is the daughter.

This is the "bad" son. He is being kept in this cage because he fights with his daddy when they are together in the open. The ranger led us to the cage, and as he was unlocking it, we were thinking we were going into his pen. Then we had to crawl in this pen to get to his individual cage. Austin followed the ranger, and Coby & Kelsey were right behind Austin. But when Austin got to the cage, the lion growled, and Coby & Kelsey backed up as fast as they could to get out of there. We couldn't see there was a door that closed his cage, because all the other doors we passed were open. It was kind of scary being this close to a roaring lion!