All right, now it is time for you to start getting jealous. This Sunday, wait for it…I played with lion and cheetah cubs! It was leGEn…wait for it…DaRY! Mom, I know you sent me an email saying that I couldn’t do it, so I made sure it was the first thing I did. At least I didn’t adopt any, or did I? Albert and I went to the Cheetah Experience in Bloemfontein to get up close and personal with some crazy wild cats. It is a non-profit organization primarily concerned with education. It was started by Riana, who bought her first cheetah in 2006 and lived with it in a townhouse for a few years before she started at the current site. She started the organization to ensure the long-term survival of the cheetah and its ecosystem and it grew from there. We met Riana when we were in the cage with the white lion cub. Did you know that cheetahs are predicted to be extinct in the wild in the next 10 years? I didn’t realize it was so soon for such an interesting animal.
We had a private tour of the grounds with Adeline, a volunteer from Singapore that is moving to Providence, RI in two weeks. Small world and everyday getting smaller. First we looked at the bigger cats from a distance, i.e. in cages because they could probably kill us in one pounce. We saw some Bengal tiger cubs (3 months old) and while they were the same size as the lion cubs, they were already too strong for us to get in the cage and play with. The Bengal tigers will be 800 pounds when they are fully grown! CRAZY, but they were very interested in us and very cute…We also looked at some Jaguars, which are sooooooo cooooool. Super intense though, again I was all right just looking at them from outside the cage. I had really wanted to see one when I was backpacking Chiapas in Mexico, but after seeing these ones in the cage, I am sosososo glad I never came face-to-face with one in the wild. We also looked at some almost fully grown lions before moving over too see all the baby versions.
We spent sometime out in the field with cheetahs and while we could go up to the cheetahs, we also had to keep an eye out to make sure none of them snuck up us when we weren’t paying attention. The two younger cheetahs just really liked to play and they would do like Lenny or other house cats and grab on to your ankle and start trying to bite your feet. While they definitely got me around the ankles, I made it out unscathed. Not exactly the same experience as when Lenny bites me. The older ones were like older cats in that they just sleep all the time and do not want to be bothered. Also while we were there we played with 2 brown lion cubs that were only 2 months old and adorable. See my Facebook profile picture. It was strange because when they are babies they don’t growl, they make weird alien calls; it is the weirdest sound when you expect them to make these deep scary growl noises. Additionally we met and played with some caracals or big house cats with grande ears.
After our first African adventure in the wild, we embarked on African adventure numero dos: Urban style. You wouldn’t believe what a project it has been to try to get our Internet up and running. Good news, its up and running on Albert’s computer at this point, which is enough to keep us somewhat connected. We learned this Sunday that everything, I mean everything closes at 2 p.m. Why so early? I have yet to find out, why would you be closed when people are free to run errands and have time away from work? I guess it is family time or something, who knows! So we ran around Bloem from internet place to Vodacom place, from mall to mall trying to find someone to help us set our internet up and after 3 hours of running around and bothering a man in a Vodacom store that was closed, we left Bloem with a phone number. So not a complete failure because we came away with someone’s names and number, but a failure in that we still didn’t have Internet. Oh gotta love Africa. Mark, our own personal IT technician, has now become our best friend here in Kim because we see him everyday as he troubleshoots his way through this Internet situation. Mine is still yet to be set up, iBurst and iMacs are not becoming friends. Long application process maybe. Hopefully soon.
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