Namibia U18 ITF Grade 4, Day 7

Wednesday 7^th May 2014

After 6 days of training hard and competing hard, we had a well-deserved rest day today which saw us go to the fantastic Dusternbrook Farm to see the Cheetahs and Leopards being fed.

Due to the early bus timetable this week we’ve been getting up around 5.45am so I thought it was about time that Toby had a lie-in today! We met for breakfast at 9.30am and then spent a relaxing morning at the hotel before it was time to leave for the farm.

One of the hotel taxi drivers picked us up at 12.45pm and took us on the 30km drive to the entrance to the land where the farm was based. What we didn’t know was that we had a further 18km on gravel roads – not that it made a difference to our driver as he continued to drive at 80km/h!

When we went through the gates to the farm we were immediately met by Springboks, Oryx, Impala and Warthogs roaming free in their natural environment. The farm is the first and oldest guest farm in Namibia and has been at its current location since 1908.

At 2pm we got into the open bus and took a short drive through the farm to where the Cheetahs were. As soon as they heard us coming both the two 7 year old males tracked the bus until we got to an open space where our guide started feeding them. It was brilliant to get so close to these amazing animals and as you can imagine we didn’t stop taking pictures! Here are some of the best ones:

After 30 minutes we left the Cheetahs and drove down the track to see one of the Leopards, but, when we arrived he wasn’t as welcoming as the Cheetahs had been! It took a bit of time for the guide to entice out the 9 year old male and when he did come out he was a lot more aggressive than the Cheetahs had been!

Click here for a video that made us all jump!

Again we got some great pictures of the Leopard feeding including one of him climbing a tree to get the food that the guide had thrown up there:

At 3pm it was time to leave him to his dinner and we headed back to the main farmhouse. We were due to leave straightaway but on our way to trying to find the toilet, Toby and I walked around the back of the main house to this breath-taking view:

As we looked closer we saw more and more wild animals roaming in the reserve and it was really nice to see all of these animals without them being behind cages in a Zoo.

At 4pm we left the farm and, having been looking for different animals all afternoon, we suddenly saw a lot more than we did on the way to the farm! On the drive back I decided to try and edit some of the pictures / videos that I had taken but I didn’t realise that I had taken over 250!

We arrived back at just before 5pm and even though it was nice to get back to our hotel, it was an absolutely fantastic afternoon – I would recommend Dusternbrook Farm (www.duesternbrook.net) to anyone that comes to Windhoek and I hope I get the chance to go back there in the future.

That ends week 1 and we’ll start our preparations for week 2 tomorrow!