Ghost and the Darkness

Adolf JJa14 small 1Adolf one of our seasoned guides just did a private Walking South Africa JJa14 tour for a Belgium operator and had a wonderful trip for 16 days Johannesburg to Johannesburg with 12 clients. He has this little extract from his trip that he wanted to share. In 1898 two male lions terrorised railway workers in Tsavo West Africa, they were named by the locals the Ghost and the Darkness.
On this safari we did close to the Kruger national park I was reminded about these two lions of Tsavo, lone, males walking around, being feared by everything and everyone.

We were in Balule game reserve looking at a group of buffalo on a game viewer after doing a small walk, when we saw a male lion resting underneath a tree. He was alone, just resting, but suddenly someone spotted another male lion walking on the opposite side of the vehicle towards the buffalo, stalking the buffalo.

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We reversed our vehicle a bit so that we are out of the way if these buffalo decided to start running, and all of a sudden out of nowhere the lion attacked and the buffalo stampeded away.

One buffalo bull was unlucky enough to find the male lion clinging to his back as he is trying to escape. With the raw power of a true predator the lion held on to the buffalo, sinking his nails into the thick skin of the buffalo.

Slowly the other male lion stood up as he saw the commotion and the calmly went to go help his friend pull down this buffalo, by this time the rest of the heard abandoned their comrade and headed to safety.

Both the lions now had their teeth sank into the skin of the buffalo, one at the throat and one at the back.
To us it looked like the buffalo lost his will to fight, these lions were too much to handle, they were relentless.
It took around half an hour for the buffalo to stop breathing, and the lions released their grip to get some rest in the hot summer heat
Slowly they started to feed on the buffalo, to them this was routine, no big deal.
They showed us why the lion is the king of the jungle, they were the bosses, and they sat there feeding like kings.
It reminded me of the story of the Tsavo lions, and why those railway workers were so afraid of them. If two males can drag down an 800 kg buffalo, what chances do we have if faced with those lions coming for us??