We said good bye to Patty, Tim, Kay, and Mike after breakfast. They were spending the morning in town and then Rodney was taking them to the airport to catch a flight to Jo’berg and then home. We were flying from Cape Town to Amsterdam and then home. Our flight didn’t leave until 11 that night so we had the whole day.
That morning we went to the airport to pick up a car. We planned to go to Darling which was supposed to have beautiful wild flowers. Rodney had given us a route and told us to stay out of the townships. Unfortunately we missed a turn and ended up in a township but luckily we didn’t have any problems. We arrived in Darling and were underwhelmed by the flowers. Here are some pictures.
We decided to head back into town for lunch. Fortified by Indian food for lunch we headed south to a Cheetah reserve. Cheetahs are often killed by farmers because they are killing the farmer’s herd. The reserve’s main purpose is to train dogs to protect herds. Certain types of dogs will come to view the herd as their family and will fight any predators to the death to protect their family. Cheetahs are non confrontational so the dog will scare them off. To date they have placed over 200 dogs. The reserve keeps cheetahs as ambassadors for the reserve cause. At the reserve they also had caracal, mongoose, bat eared foxes and serval.
After getting a tour we were ready for our encounter with cheetah cubs. The center has three 5 1/2 month cheetah cubs, one female and two males. Eventually the female will go back to the breeding center and the two males will go to a zoo in Australia. The cubs were taken from their mother when they were three weeks old. Since then they have get getting use to human contact. They were playing and jumping on each other while we were waiting for the encounter. Three staff members were required, one for each cub just in case something went wrong. We had to disinfect our hands and shoes before going in. Once in there one of the cubs was laying down so we knelt down and pet him. He didn’t seem to mind at all.
In total we probably spent five minutes in cage with them and it was great. Afterwards they were feed, eating rare meat from the hands of their handlers.
All in all a wonderful experience.
Because it was too early to go to the airport we drove down the coast. Here are some pictures.
After sunset we headed to the airport to turn in the car. We had a long 24 hour trip home with very little sleep but that’s ok because we had a great vacation. Now we are home trying to sort through our pictures and get ready for the next adventure, Egypt and Jordan, in November.