Cheetah Park
NAMIBIA
Cheetah Park & Buddy the Giraffe
By AARON
Sunday, April 24, 2011
So as we munched on our Easter chocolates left for us by the illustrious (and elusive) Easter Jackal from Etosha National Park, my excitement grew kilometer by kilometer as we approached our next excursion for the day – the Cheetah Park.
In a place I can’t even begin to pronounce (Otjitotongwe), we pulled into the park on Easter Sunday, and were greeted by Buddy the resident giraffe. Buddy was rescued by this family-run park and has been a staple there ever since.
Abnormally used to humans, he is a wild giraffe, which means he goes off in search of females from time to time, so it was a pleasant surprise to see him considering he had been gone for about 2 months in search of his perfect mate. It was a great introduction to the park as Buddy literally stuck his head in our truck windows and ate apples out of our hands. Once we ran out of apples, Buddy stuck around just a bit more, but then sauntered off, his belly full and our cameras a few pictures heavier than before.
After setting up camp and eating lunch, we were picked up and taken to the main house, which houses three cheetahs that unfortunately can’t be released into the wild, but after all the attention, petting and feeding that they get, I doubt they mind living out their lives in this paradise of a back yard.
All of us ooh’d and ahh’d over the cheetahs as they behaved like a couple of common house cats, purring, nuzzling and even licking the salty legs of the residents and locals alike. And just like house cats, when they are done being pampered, they will walk off, but in these cats’ cases, not before giving you a bit of a growl that quickly snaps you back to reality that these are in fact wild creatures and not some fluff ball you can dress up like a gladiator every Halloween and call “Kittius Maximus”.
Speaking of which, I bet it is every house cat’s fantasy to be a giant cheetah or lion. Not so they could stoke their already inflated ego, but just so they could maul and maim their owner if they even danced across the thought of dressing them up in some ridiculous outfit when the occasion rose. But I digress.
After the petting came the feeding of the cheetahs, which was a bit anti-climatic but fun nonetheless as we watched them each take their chunks of meat to their respective corners and proceed to lick, gnaw and chew their raw meat until is was gone. It was zebra meat by the way.
After the feeding, we loaded back up into the open-ended trailer (think of a hay ride) and were carted back to the campsite thinking, “wow, that was a pretty neat excursion”, but wait- we weren’t heading to the campsite!? The truck proceeded to drive past our site and enter a gated area where our first thought was “oh great, another ‘game drive'”.
Now I’ll admit, I love animals, but after 3 days in Etosha, and just having petted cheetahs, in reality I was just ready to head back to the campsite and relax, but nooooooooo, Mr. Smooth-talking-ladies-look-at-me-I-live-with-cheetahs guy decided he was going to drive around a bit more. Fine.
So here we are in this open-ended trailer, going through a patch of land where the largest creature we saw was a lizard, and I’m just…… oh, wait – is that a cheetah stalking our truck? Ahh, that’s cute, it’s probably one of the cheetahs from the house. Look! There’s another one with 3 of his friends. Wait, weren’t there only 3 cheetahs at the house? Ooohhhhh sh……..t.
Next thing we know we’re being “followed” by about 10 cheetahs, stalking, creeping and swiftly moving through the bushes and shrub with, well, cat-like efficiency. Then we stop. Mr Smooth-Talker then proceeds to get out and open up a bin of zebra meat and by then, between the crack squad of minds we had on the back of that trailer, we finally figured out that this was yet another cheetah feeding and that these cheetahs were a bit more wild than the other ones. Probably something that he could have told us in advance, but I bet he gets a kick out of it every time and to be honest, if in his position I would do the same exact thing.
And wild these cheetahs were. There was something different in their eyes, some sort of crazed look that came super-sized with hunched shoulders, scowls on their faces and snarls instead of purrs. Once wild cheetahs, these were rescued for the sole purpose of keeping them from being killed. Hence the cheetah park.
The park was set up because too many cheetahs were being killed by the local farmers after the cheetahs would hunt and kill their cattle and animals. So now these cats will be permanent residents in this enclosed land not only for the outer farms’ safety, but for their own as well.
Feeding these animals was an entirely different experience than feeding the 3 cheetahs back at the house (which were born into captivity and have grown up around humans their whole lives. Hence dressing them up on Halloween. Just kidding, they would still kill you.).
Feeding time here was a competition, with growls, fights, snarls and more fights. Even though there was enough meat for each cheetah, getting first seemed to be an alpha-male competition, with only the meanest and biggest getting their helpings first.
Another thing to bring up at this time is the sounds that cheetahs make, as they’re not anything I had figured. One of the cheetahs at the house would make this little yippy dog yell when he wanted more food. Another wild cheetah would make almost a crying sound and unfortunately that must mean “I am weak”, because not only was she missing one eye, but she was also picked on by all the other cheetahs and were it not for the help of the staff here, would have eaten last, if at all.
After each cheetah had been fed, we went to another corner of the reserve to feed some more cheetahs and then headed back to the campsite. Now, instead of “gee, that was fun”, it was “wow – absolutely amazing”. So what do you do if you’re Lyndi and you want to celebrate this joyous day full of cheetahs and giraffes? I’ll tell you. You just get 3 of your friends together, find the campsite bar, and get rip-roaring drunk! So while I played pool with a couple of Czech guys, Lyndi, Jordan, Marina and Nicole proceeded to down about 10 shots each and cap off the night by dancing on the bar. What a day! Lyndi even managed to lose one of her sandals on the way to the bathroom, so I would give the day a 10/10 on adventure points alone.
Waking up at 5:30am the next morning was hard – considering we went to bed at 3:30am, so it wasn’t any help when on our long drive that day, we got bogged down in some sand.
So speaking of alpha-males in the cheetah population, guess what? There are also alpha-males in the human population. After about an hour of being stranded, we had about 6 guys and 25 girls there, from our group and also from cars that had pulled over to help. Guess who decided everything, even if someone with breasts suggested it 15 minutes earlier? You got it – the guys!
Not being one to interfere when it is hopelessly futile (and I even have testicles), it was fun to watch Tanya (our tour leader) and other women in the group make valid suggestions, only to have it fall on deaf ears until a bit later, one guy says, “hey, maybe we should jack the truck up and set the big rocks underneath it?” “Great idea Steve!”. Funny, Stacy had that idea an hour ago. So after approximately 3 hours and help from another overland vehicle, we were finally out and on our way again.
After our 3 hour delay, we promptly headed to the Seal Colony, which is basically a smelly group of seals on the west coast of Africa. Okay, the seals were cute, especially the baby ones, but oh man did it stink. You could stand maybe about 15 minutes snapping away pictures before you were forced back into the truck and to relatively clean air. There’s even stories of tour leaders who would try to downplay the colony visit, in hopes that the passengers would opt to bypass it. When the passengers would inevitably want to go, the tour leader would then suggest that they eat lunch there as well! This would be enthusiastically received by the group, that is, until they got there, and by then it was too late. Tour Leader-1, Group-0.
Luckily, our tour leader Tanya, just had us do a quick visit of the Seal Colony (which is all you need) and from there we headed to the German town of Swakopmund, full of German food, German architecture, and, well, Germans.
