Lions up close in South Africa

At the Lion Park outside Johannesburg, South Africa, you'll make friends like these rowdy girls, age 4 months and 2 1/2 months, and drive through wooded three-acre enclosures to watch lion families. I volunteered at the park for 10 days this spring (fall in South Africa), paying a substantial fee to a UK middleman to clean lion poop, pick up trash and struggle for sleep in tents full of bed-hopping heterosexual gap-year travelers. I did log plenty of cub time, cuddling them and doling out their carefully calibrated Royal Canin-and-horsemeat diet. (The cubs themselves are not so discerning: The big one in the photo ate the buttons off my pants, and the little one is about to run off with my hat.) The Lion Park itself is good value, humane and far less touristy than U.S. animal parks. You can stay all day for 90 rand a person (about $14) with multiple visits to the enclosures and Touch-a-Cub zone, buy food there or BYO picnic for free.