Cheetah Park

We left the last of the National Parks we are to visit and headed further down Namibia to a Cheetah Park at Kamanjab. I guess we don't really get the excitement about cheetahs so we will try our best to sound ever so slightly excited about the experience of petting a tame cheetah and watching some wild cheetah eat meat. We arrived at a desert campsite and spent the afternoon with three cheetahs that have been kept as pets for their whole lifetime. They each had a really loud purr on them - exactly like a cat - and were absolutely harmless provided that you didn't make eye contact with them. Cheetahs are kind of wierd looking creatures - extremely skinny with big heads and all in all, pretty evil looking. After playing with the tame cheetah for a while, we headed out on the back trays of 4x4s to watch the wild cheetah kept at the farm (the farm offers the local farmers money not to shoot cheetahs caught attacking their cattle). They were obviously far more vicious than the tame cats and hissed and made threatening jumps at the men as they got out of the vehicles to throw the meat to them. The night was freezing and we sat around a fire struggling to keep warm before giving up and heading for our warm sleeping bags.