Okonjima, Namibia: 24th September 2009

Our last full day. This morning we were meant to be on cheetah poo duty, but this was scrapped for dramatic purposes!

5 wild cheetahs had wandered onto the reserve and were trying to fight with the captive cheetah’s through the fences of their enclosures causing all sorts of traumas. So we volunteers were asked to flush them out, which involved fanning out and walking through the bush trying to spot them.

Now although we were reassured that the wild Cheetah’s would run away from us if they saw us, we were a little disconcerted. I mean, these are large wild cats that hunt meat, and we didn’t even have a fence between us! They’re also the fastest animal on earth, I, on the other hand, am not...So drawing inspiration from Mat’s earlier encounter I grabbed a stick and prepared to tell any rogue cheetah to ‘shut it’ if it tried to attack – worked for him, so should work for me! It turned out we didn’t see the cheetahs (although Matt saw something jump out of the bush and scarper) so after a couple of hours trogging through the reserve we were put on ‘wild dog water hole cleaning duty’.

It was what it said on the tin, we had to go to the enclosure of 5 wild dogs (the rarest pooch in Africa), which had been brought to the reserve by a farmer after his neighbour had buried them alive as puppies! We emptied out the watering hole with buckets that helpfully had large holes in them and then scrubbed it and re-filled. Oh joy.

After that Clive said that as it was the last day we could have a go on his gun...a point 3 something magnum. Hmmm...never was one for cops and robbers, but a new experience is not to be missed so off we tootled to the shooting range – a piece of metal up against a bank of earth to which Clive pinned a target. I hit the cardboard 8 out of my 10 attempts but failed to hit the target once. Matt managed to hit the pole a few times. Still, it was quite good fun!

In the evening we were meant to be driving into the mountains to sleep ‘under the stars’ i.e. not in tents, but a mid afternoon thunder storm meant our plans were cancelled, so after a final afternoon game drive we settled in for a night at the camp and ate bobotie – it was delicious, like bread and butter pudding with custard on top served on minced meat! Yum!