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For a long time Deearne has wanted to go to Africa to play with lion cubs for her 40th birthday. Well, the planning is almost complete and come March next year we’ll be doing exactly that.

The plan is to fly from Australia to Johannesburg, where we’ll overnight at the Mondior Concorde Hotel, before flying on to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. From there we transfer by road to the Chobe Safari Lodge in Botswana.

While in Chobe we’ll do game drives and a Chobe River cruise with a view to seeing as many African animals in the wild as possible. However our chances of seeing any big cats here is relatively slim. After a couple of days in Chobe we road transfer back to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe where we’ll stay at the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge.

In Victoria falls we have our first lion encounter with an excursion to the Masuwe estate. Here we get to spend an hour-and-a-half walking with two to three lion cubs aged from 3 to 16 months. In addition to the lion encounter we’ve also organised a guided tour of Victoria Falls—the largest curtain of falling water in the world—and a sunset cruise on the Zambezi River to see more animals in the wild.

From Victoria Falls we fly back to Johannesburg and then on to Port Elizabeth, on the south coast of South Africa. There we’ll be staying at the Beach Hotel from where we plan to visit the Seaview Game & Lion Park for our second lion encounter. Here we’re hoping to be able to play with some young lion cubs, and at this stage they should have some 4-month-old cubs around the time we are there.

From Port Elizabeth it’s then back to Johannesburg for another overnight stay before flying on to Mauritius for a week of rest and relaxation at The Sands Resort. So far we don’t have a lot planned for the Mauritius leg of our trip, other than the pool/beach, but we’ll probably take at least one outing to Cascavelle for another lion encounter at Safari Adventures Mauritius.

From Mauritius we then head home on a very long flight via Perth and Melbourne, but no doubt worth it for the experiences we’ll have had.