Erindi - the Cheetah Walk


Cheetah - what a beauty! All other photos are will the kill. 
Warning! Most of the photos in this post are of the Cheetahs at a kill. Not for sensitive viewers! So, in a previous post I discussed the wonderful private nature reserve which is Erindi. I mentioned one of their activities is a Cheetah walk. Just a word of warning - all of the photos in this post are of cheetah at a kill. Some may find the photos disturbing. Some of the animals which they have on the reserve are rehabilitated "problem" animals. There are still many cheetah in Namibia, but they are not very popular with the farmers. They are hunted or captured and relocated. Erindi is one of the places which takes these captured Cheetah and give them a home. All of the predators on Erindi are fitted with radio collars. Not the best thing to see a collar on the animal, but better seeing a live animal with a collar than a dead one without a collar. The main purpose of the radio collar is that, if the animal escapes into the adjoining farm lands, the animal can be traced, darted and brought back onto the reserve. The local farmers will give the rangers at Erindi a chance to capture the animal if it has a collar on. Another huge benefit of the collars is, the rangers can find the special animals on the reserve. On the normal game drive, the radio collars are not used and it remains up to Lady Luck what you see or don't see.

On the cheetah walk, we were looking for cheetah, so we used the radio. The trip started in the early morning. It was the ranger, a young lady and I on the trip.we started off driving for some way until we reached some high ground to get a signal. Once we know the general direction we drove until we were getting a good "ping" from the collar on the cheetah. We parked the vehicle off the dirt track and started on foot. Now I did mention in a previous post, this is a big 5 reserve! Lion, black rhino, elephant, buffalo and leopard. All more than capable of killing a human. Oh the adrenaline rush!


We walked through the bush for about 3 km till we found them. They had just caught a young  hartebeest. If was had been there about 10 mins earlier, we would have seen the kill. So here we were with two cheetah on a kill. The ranger took us to about 40 meters from the cheetah. We then just watched them having dinner (or rather breakfast). Not sure that animals worry too much about what you call the meal. They just eat. We were with the cheetah for about 2 hours. One of the most amazing times of my life. Two wild cheetah eating and me, on foot, in the bush with them not more than 40 meters away! What an amazing experience.

At one point the ranger warned us not to get worried if the cheetah suddenly run directly towards us!!!! He said that the smell of the kill often attract other predators and if they do come and chance off the cheetah,  they run to the humans and hid behind them! Fortunately no other predators came so we did not have to test if I have nerves of steel.

Ranger with Cheetah in front. Maybe not even 40 meters?
After we had our fill of watching the cheetah we moved off, marking a route for the game drive vehicles to help them find the Cheetah.
Game meat is tough!

Cheetah have always been one of my favourite animals. The beautiful spots and the tear streak on the face. Just love them. This was an amazing experience. This was not my first time to be on foot with a wild cheetah. In the dim and distant past, when I was a student, I was with a ranger/student who was doing research on cheetah and we also used a radio collar to find the cheetah. She was just lying down. Still and amazing experience. But this experience in Erindi, where the cheetah were eating, and we were standing only 40 meters away, will be hard to top!
Brothers in arms


Getting into your meal
Other posts on Erindi can be found at :

https://passionatetraverler.blogspot.com/2018/04/erindi-great-destination-for-wildlife.html

 https://passionatetraverler.blogspot.com/2018/04/erindi-part-2-predators.html

https://passionatetraverler.blogspot.com/2018/04/erindi-wild-dogs-and-dinosaurs.htm








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