Danish Girl Student

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Namibia :)

Filed under: Uncategorized — kdane95 at 1:36 pm on Sunday, January 18, 2009  Tagged , ,



Namibia is a gorgeous country with so many things to do and stuff to see. My family and I lived there for four years and during those four years we did alot of things like quadbiking, driving through rivers, visiting grand waterfalls, national parks and so much more. But there were two things that always stuck in my mind : The Cheetah Farm in Otjitotongwe and then one of our family friends owned their own farm which we visited regularly.

Cheetah Farm

We were close friends of the owners of this cheetah farm because we visited it so many times over the years. The cheetah farm was a lodge, campsite, and also a place you could visit for just the day. The lodge rooms were round and brown/orangey bricked with thick black thatch for the roof. I loved staying there.

One of the main things my family loved to do was feed the cheetahs. There was a large enclosure that contained many wild, untamed, hungry cheetahs. What would happen is, we would all board the truck which had an open back apart from a little gate separating us and the cheetahs and so all the guests would get on the back and we would drive into the enclosure with a bin of raw meet on the back of the truck aswell. Once we stopped somewhere, the owner would open the gate and then hop back into the car while the wild cheetahs leaped onto the truck only half a meter away from us maybe less, and pull out a peice of meat from the bin and then hop back onto the ground. Once or twice a cheetah would look up and see all of us watching him, but the raw meat must have been more inviting.

About ten minutes away from the lodge itself, was the home of the owners. They would take us in their truck over to their house where they kept the more tame cheetahs.

We entered the rusty old gate and as soon as we had entered the property, big and small cheetahs were crowding the wheels of the truck. I was young then, and the owners told us that cheetahs played a bit more rough with the younger kids because they feared them less. So, with that in mind i kept away from the cheetahs clinging onto my dads arm as we walked over the main garden. Once around more people, i got less scared and began to play with the cheetahs and pet them. Their tongues would lick your and hands and it felt as though you were being scratched by wet sand paper. They were actually all really well tamed cheetahs apart from one which was still young and wasn’t so used to people yet, and this one used both his paws to grab onto my ankle and sort began scratching me, i was really scared of this one and the owner had to come and help me. I had a mark from the scratches for about a month that.

Friends Farm

My parents friends owned a big massive farm where they had impala’s, lions, cheetahs and all sorts of animals. It was amazing because whenever we went for bush drives with them, it was like a professional safari from a hotel except it was just our family and theirs standing on the back of their open truck (again.). He owned quite alot of savannah, but once you got past that they had these tall red sanded dunes, where we would stop for a sun downer and play night games and bury ourselves in the sand. Often, whenever we would visit we would pitch up a tent on one of the red sand dunes and stay there.

They also owned two horses and sometimes we would be able to take them out for a ride which was great. But the only thing i didn’t like about this farm was that we caught our own food. My dad, and his friend would shoot the impala’s and then bring them back to the farm where the workers would hang them outside on a hook and skin them, then take out all the neceassary stuff. I even got to see the heart sometimes. but whenever dinner was served, I refused to eat anything they had killed and skinned infront of me.

But other than, this is one of my favourite places.

 

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