Hoba Meterorite

After the Cheetah Conservation Fund, we went to a campsite called the Otavi Vineyard Restcamp. Mummy and Daddy had a bottle of their red wine to celebrate Mummy’s birthday. I made Mummy a grey wool bracelet.

Then we went to the Hoba Meteorite. It is the biggest meteorite in the world! It is massive, I estimated it as 2m by 2m by 1m. It is made of iron, and weighs about 60 tonnes. It didn’t leave a crater, so scientists think that it skipped across the earth’s atmosphere like a stone. You can see it is shiny where scientists have taken bits to study.

Then we went to a campsite called Roy’s. It had a cold swimming pool, but the best thing was the jungle gym!!

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Cheetahs!

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Yesterday we went to the Cheetah Conservation Fund. We did a tour and saw cheetahs, but they were mostly lying down in the shade. Mummy was carrying Genevieve, and when Genevieve got down, one of the cheetahs was very interested and ran right up to the fence! It thought she was a small antelope! It was really close, and we could see its orange eyes and black tear marks.

We learnt lots of interesting things about cheetahs:
* Cheetahs hunt in the day time, so they don’t compete with leopards, lions and hyenas.
* Cheetahs get blamed for killing farm animals because they are the predators that the farmer sees.
* Cheetahs can see 5km!
* Cheetahs are the fastest land animal and can run about 110km/hr! They use their tail to steer, like a rudder on a boat.
* There are only about 7,500 cheetahs left in the world, with 3,000 in Namibia.
* When cubs are born they have long hair on their backs and it gives them a disguise, because they look like honey badgers.
* Cheetahs can’t roar, but they can purr.


At the moment there are 35 cheetahs that live there. They can’t go back to the wild because they don’t know how to look after themselves. They have 7 cheetahs that will be able to be released, and they have one cub that is only a few weeks old, though we didn’t see it.

We saw the cheetahs have their lunch. They eat old donkeys and horses, and the food has predator powder on it, to give them their vitamins. The cheetahs were waiting and rushed in to get their food. The food is given in a bowl, because in the wild, the cheetahs eat their prey from the inside out. So the skin is like a natural bowl. It was interesting because some of the cheetahs put their paws on their food, just like a dog. That means the cheetah was taken away from its Mum too early. In the wild the cheetahs have to always be ready to run because other animals steal their food, and they are not good at fighting.

At the Cheetah Conservation Fund they also raise Anatolian Shepherd Dogs. These dogs are brought up to protect all the farm animals. They get trained with goats and they think the goats are their family! The dogs are sold to farmers, so the farmers don’t shoot cheetahs.

I like Cheetahs. My favourite was one called Tiger Lily! There was also a Rainbow, Aurora, Hermonine, Harry and Ron. Like the Beautiful Gate orphanage in Lesotho, The Cheetah Conservation Fund runs on donations. It also gets money from visitors and from selling cheese it makes from its goat farm. It also has interns from all over the world, and maybe I could do that one day when I am older!

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Windhoek

We spent a few days in Windhoek. We really liked Urban Camp, and made some friends. There was a swimming pool, and Daddy liked the bar. We had to stay because the car needed some new parts. We got a new brake hose, 4 new tyres and coils to replace the air bags.

In Windhoek we went to the national art gallery. It was different to other art galleries because the art was not just paintings. The artists were all local and used ‘mixed media’, like newspaper, nails, string, beads, animal horns and wood. The art was all for sale too. My favourite piece of art was called ‘The seed of identity’ and was of a twisted horn. (Sorry, no photo!) I also liked one called ‘Etosha’ which was a scene of cows, made of twigs tied with string. There was one room that was filled with different pictures of rhinos. It was very good.

After this we went to the Museum. It was interesting, but a bit run down. Some of the lights didn’t work. These are some of the things that we saw/learnt:

  • A house made by the Nama people, and made out of reed mats. It is the only one left as people now use modern materials.
  • Some people get their grain by breaking into ant nests and stealing it!
  • There was a wooden wagon with a canopy that early settlers used. The wheels were wooden with a metal rim to protect them. I think that this is the same sort of wagon that Laura and Mary used in ‘Little House on the Prairie’
  • There was a rhino skin, that was very thick and hard. Daddy said some people used it for armour.
  • There was a guano platform between Walvis Bay and Swakopmunda. People used to collect it and sell it for fertiliser! Guano is bird poo – I would not want that job!
  • We saw musical instruments. I liked the honey bird whistle. People hollowed out an apple, and used it to call the honey bird. The bird takes the people to a hive and they all get honey. There were reed flutes that they left in milk when they weren’t being used.
  • We learnt about growing and collecting Omahangu, which is millet. People turn into flour and then eat it as porridge.
  • We saw how they made ostrich egg shells into necklaces by breaking them into little pieces, then shaped them into circles and drill holes. They change the colour to brown or black by frying it!

 

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Van Zyl’s Pass Video

Hi all – as you may have already read, Eleanor wasn’t a huge fan of Van Zyl’s Pass in Kaokoland.  I was.  🙂  See video below for a taster of what it’s like.  Roofrack mounted camera doesn’t really do it justice, but you can see the horizon lurch around somewhat.  I had Margaret hanging off the tree sliders twice (I seriously thought we were about to roll on 2 occasions – felt the car start to go, corected by steering into it in conjunction with Margaret hanging off like a yachtie, unfortunately neither of the close calls are in the video).
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The Petrified Forest and Omatozu Safari

After the awesome elephants, Daddy wanted to get to Windhoek, (the capital of Namibia) to get some new parts for the car. So we started driving south. We drove slowly because we didn’t really have brakes. On the way we stopped at a Petrified forest. We got a guide to take us on a tour.  We walked up a small hill and found some fossilised trees. They were huge, one was 40m long. It had cracks in it because of earthquakes. There were pieces of trees everywhere! On one stone tree you could see the rings to show how old it was. The trees were 125 million years old.

Then our guide showed us some plants that were used for traditional medicine. There was one tree, called a butterfly tree, that you had to pick 10 leaves and make a tea to drink. It would stop you having diarrhea. Another tree was called the Bushman’s Candle. Our guide squeezed out some sap and said you could rub it on mosquito bites. She said that the Himba people mix it with ochre to make sunscreen.

Then we stayed at a campsite called Omatozu Safari. We did a 7km walk on our own. We saw some warthogs and some rock hyrax. But the best thing was seeing some giraffes. The next morning we did a drive around the lodge. Mummy and I sat on the roof for a bit, the view was good, but we stopped when there was a camelthorn tree in the path. Mummy got some thorns in her hand, but I was fine. We saw a few antelope and warthogs, and we got really close to more giraffes. We were hoping to see a cheetah or a leopard, but maybe next time.

Now we are in Windhoek.

 

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