7 days Safari: AfriCat Foundation

Leopard

This new adventure began with me sorting out pictures and posting the last blog article while waiting on my transfer to Wild Dog/Crazy Kudu's office. The driver arrived a little late so all the others were already settled in the bus. There i met Marianne and Vincent from the previous trip and the rest of the group. The others were the girls from another group who were on a 7 days trip to the south before. We met them at the last campsite. We were 2 men for 7 girls - happy us :) ! I wanted to buy a t-shirt so i just went into the office to buy one. I bought a cap to, because they look good and i'm fed up with my tourist's bob (i'll keep that one for home). After that the guide/driver explained our trip to us and we left for the north. We took the same road as for Swakopmund as far as Okahandja where the road west forks off. There we bought the necessary supplies: the driver the food, and we the drinks (lots of beer and some water). We drove on for a time to get north to Okonjima, the home of the AfriCat Foundation. Once there we set up camp and went straight to the pool because it was so very hot. We spent some time at the pool before heading back to camp.

Cheetahs

At around 4 pm the people from the AfriCat foundation came to fetch us to show us their current cats. AfriCat Foundation is a foundation which helps save wild cats from being shot on farmland. They capture the cats or take in captured cats to release them later on either on the same land or a different land, depending on the farmer.

We drove in an open jeep, with enough seats to accommodate us all, to the gates of the enclosed area where the cats live. Our first stop was the enclosed area which is already enclosed in a wider area where the leopard lives. There the manager (who also was our driver) put out some meat on tree branches before letting us into a safe house from which we could watch the leopard eat.

After this we went for a drive to see if we could find the cheetahs which are wild animals. We crisscrossed the whole area without success for some time when suddenly, we saw one of them lying on the dirt track in front of us. We took a lot of pictures and waited a long time while the cheetah was calling his brothers. Later two other cheetahs joined the first one and began being friendly with each other. After this experience we headed back home to our camp. It was beginning
to get cold on the open vehicle and some of us needed a toilet quickly. We watched the beautiful sunset during the drive. Once back we saw that Cliffton our driver and Jason his assistant had already prepared dinner so we prepared ourselves to eat some steaks.