Bagatelle

After a pole pole start to our morning, we finally met up with our guide to take us to the cheetah feeding. We had no idea what to expect - zero info online and we only heard about it after we checked into our lodge. Our guide drove us a short drive into the cheetah captivity area. The team only rescues orphan cheetahs that will not survive alone in the wild. This place had 5 cheetahs total - 2 females together, 2 males and than 1 female in a separate space. All the areas had at least 22 acres of space for the cheetahs to run around. We watched as the guides hand fed these beautiful creatuers. They are working hard in cheetah conservation. Forty years ago the cheetah population was around 100,000. Now, the population has decreased to around 7,000 and half of that number is found here in Namibia. Several conservationist have dedicated their lives to this cause. They have raised awareness by educating the local farmers - appartenly farmers are the number 1 killers for cheetahs. The cheetahs started feeding on their livestock (goats, sheep, cow) and the farmers kill the cheetahs to protect their livelyhood. By educating the farmers and providing larger dogs for protection, the death in farm livestock has dramaticly increased to around 98% survival rate. One lady donated over 500 large dogs (german shepard types) to the local farmers to help protect the livestock from potential natural predators like cheetahs, leopards, wild dogs, hyaenas. Truly remarkable to be able to see the beautiful animals so close much less watch them eating raw meat! 

After the cheetah feeding, we packed our bags, ate breakfast and hit the road. We had another 5-6 hour drive, mostly on dirt roads, until we reached our next lodge. We saw some giant Oryx on the side of the road. Super cool to see and watch the dynamic landscape change the further we drove. It reminded us a lot of Southern Utah and Arizona. 

Tomorrow we are waking up at 5:30 am to head out to the giant red dunes. We shall see how this adventure goes. 

PS Our hut doesn't have a/c - it was over 100 degrees today but now it has dropped to 77 degrees at 10:25 pm. We will see how we do sleeping (and the bugs are crawling all over me and the light right now).