On August 25, 2015, a safari guide was leading a “walking safari” when he was mauled by a male lion and killed. The guide was only forty years old. We arrived at our first southern Africa safari camp on September 12, 2015 – or less than three weeks after this incident. Now, several people have asked me about finding bathroom facilities when we were out on safari. They hear me say that sometimes we were out on game drives for five to six hours and that we left right after breakfast and three cups of coffee. All that is correct. But you need to understand that FINDING bathroom facilities was not a problem, as you can see in the first photo. Bathroom facilities were easy to find…

On this morning, we stopped at the spot below for morning tea. Our guide suggested that we go behind the rocks for the facilities. All seemed well and it was a great location. I was out ahead of the rest of our eight tourists and by myself. I stopped for a few moments to look at the rocks and trees as I found them quite interesting. The rock was different than most of the other rock we had seen and I love the baobab trees.

From the other side of the front of the vehicle you see in the prior photo, I was about fifty feet from the land rover when I stopped and took the photo below. As soon as I snapped this photo, I heard our safari guide yell out, “Lion Coming”! I immediately pivoted and ran to our vehicle and dove into it, landing against Vicky. I wasn’t afraid and was thinking about where Vicky and Cory were as I was running. I could see some other people, who were on the other side of our vehicle running my way, so I determined that the lion was in front of me. Cory was actually quite a bit closer to the lion, but also much closer to our vehicle. Vicky hadn’t yet exited the land rover.

What happened? Our group had sixteen tourists and two vehicles. Each vehicle drove different routes during our game drives, so that no one was behind another vehicle eating Kalahari dust. But for tea or lunch, we would meet and have our break together. On this morning, we had already arrived at our break location. The other vehicle was driving right for us. As they came, they surprised a lion that was laying in the grass. You can see him below. The lion reacted by running directly away from our other vehicle, which meant that he was running right at us. In short order, the lion saw us scrambling around and made a perpendicular turn, exiting both our directions. But at the point of our guide yelling “Lion Coming”, the lion was running right at us.

We all got into our vehicle and followed the lion. Our guides said that this was a young male lion who should not have been out and prowling about at this time of the day. At the point of my last photo of this lion, our guides decided to give up the chase. They said it was a dangerous situation since this was a young lion where it should not be. That plus they were concerned about the high grass in this area. When it headed into the woods, we broke it off and went back to the same spot for our morning tea. So FINDING bathroom facilities was not a problem. The problem was SURVIVING a bathroom stop. I decided that I’d had enough coffee for this morning…