Antelope Park

We drove from Great Zimbabwe into the sunset, to Antelope Park, near Gweru. This seemed like quite an upmarket resort - and a circus.

A member of staff came to give us a briefing on all the activities on offer: walking with lions, hunting with lions, lion cub viewing, elephant riding, elephant swimming, elephant training... I'm surprised they didn't have seals balancing balls on their noses.

As my fellow truckies eagerly signed up, my heart sank. This wasn't the Africa I had come to see and I didn't want a part of it. I managed to stay out of arguments about how I felt about what they were doing, and spent a pleasant day reading and doing exciting things like some washing.

The park claims to be running a captive breeding programme aimed at releasing lions into the wild. In twenty years they haven't yet released one, though apparently they hope to do so soon. Whether their lions end up in zoos or being 'hunted' by rich tourists who like shooting semi-tame animals isn't quite clear. I certainly can't see how a life of playing with humans is going to prepare a lion for the wild.

Still, it was nice to camp on the banks of a crocodile-infested river. And to make use of the swishest ablutions block in Africa.