February 2009 Archives

Hello everybody. I was just at the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) in Namibia. At CCF, their job is to take in injured or orphaned cheetahs and bring them back to health. Sometimes the cheetahs have problems, like not being able to hunt, so CCF has to keep them for their entire lives, or give them to a zoo. Right now they have 50 cheetahs that live there. They also educate farmers about co-existing with the cheetahs, so that more cheetahs can live safely in the wild.

On our first day at CCF, we met Bruce (the general manager of CCF), who took us to feed their three five-month-old cheetah cubs, named Phoenix, Seria, and Quasar. They were like adorable little housecat-sized cheetahs. We got to feed them by putting a little piece of meat in our palm and they would come and eat it off our hand. We even got to pet them. It felt really amazing to be with baby cheetahs, because it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Even though they've been raised by hand since they were three days old, you can really tell that they are still wild, so petting them was really exciting.

Hello out there! I just came from Namibia where we went to the Cheetah Conservation Fund--CCF for short. At CCF, they take care of cheetahs when they can't survive in the wild, like if they are orphaned as babies and haven't been taught how to hunt by their mother. They also breed Anatolian herding dogs, which they give to farmers to protect their cattle. The dogs are trained to scare cheetahs away by barking at them real loud. They grow up to be really huge dogs. Since the dog scares away the cheetahs, the farmers don't shoot them. So that's the purpose of CCF ... protecting the cheetahs.

When we arrived, we met three five-month old baby cheetahs. Their names were Quasar (the leader), Seria (the only girl in the group), and Phoenix (the independent one). We even got to feed them little chunks of meat. When they would eat it, there would be a little juice on our hands, so they would lick it off. Cheetahs' tongues feel like sandpaper and it tickles a lot. Whenever we got to see and feed the baby cheetahs we called it "cubby time." And we were really lucky because we had cubby time every day we were there, which was super fun.

Hello people. We just spent seven great days on safari in Botswana and spent most of it with the same guide named Charles. He was really nice and had a great personality. Charles came with us to two different camps, so we had two different trackers when we were with him. Our first tracker (they look for the animals) was Mr. Mo and he was really good at spotting stuff. Our next tracker was "Kenny the Cat." He was really amazing at spotting big cats.

The first camp we stayed in was called Lebala, which had really nice tents. On our first day there we saw a big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big herd of elephants. We saw babies playing and male elephants pretending to fight. I was amazed watching all of them together in such a huge area.

Hello everyone. Let me start out by describing the tiny airport in the city of Kasane, Botswana.  When we got called to board our flight, we were really surprised that we weren't getting on a normal plane like the ones you enter through a gate and all. Ours was a six-seater prop plane that was no longer than 15 feet! It was really cool to be in such a small plane and even cooler to be able to look down the aisle and see the pilot working all the controls of the plane.

After the 45-minute flight, we landed at an airstrip that was no more than a dirt clearing for the plane to land on. When we got off, we were greeted by Charles, who would be our guide for the next five days. He drove us for about 15 minutes through the African bush to Kwando's Lebala Camp, where we spent our first three nights in Botswana.  

After settling into the camp, we went for our first game drive. One of the first things we saw was a huge herd of elephants. There were easily over one hundred of them. There were some young male elephants in the group that would play fight and it looked like they were having a wrestling match with their trunks. At one point, a big male elephant came right up to our tracker, Mr. Mo, who sits in a small chair off the hood of the jeep, and tried to intimidate him by swinging his trunk around. Mr. Mo knew it was all a big show and didn't budge. Eventually, the elephant left us alone.

Hello people. For this blog, I want to tell you all about our trip to Zimbabwe and Victoria Falls, which is one of the seven natural wonders of the world. But before I do that, I should tell you that before we left South Africa, we played soccer with a bunch of other kids from a local township near Gansbaai. It was part of a Spaces for Soccer Project that the owner of Grootbos, Michael Lutzeyer, helped put together. It was fun and the score was tied 3-3. My friend Owen scored all the goals for our team!

Hello everyone. Thanks for reading my blog. This week we went to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe with our friends who joined us in South Africa. Victoria Falls is one of the Seven Wonders of the World and it is not one big waterfall, but a series of big waterfalls. It's so big that when the water hits the bottom, the mist sprays back up and you get really wet.

The next day we went on a rafting trip on the Zambezi River. It was a pretty exciting ride since we rafted by hippos and went through some bumpy water. We also saw a croc in the water, which was cool. It was so scenic on the river. We all had a blast and it was fun getting wet.

Hi everybody. We're on safari now at Sabi Sabi Private Game Reserve. Shortly after we arrived, we went on our first game drive out of many and were very lucky because the first thing we saw was a leopard. We stayed and followed it around for about an hour. Spotting the leopard was so cool, especially seeing how well it was able to camouflage itself.  All it had to do was crouch down in the grass and you couldn't see it, which helps it hunt.

Hi everyone out there on the Internet. We are in the bush of South Africa and having a great time. The first animal we saw was an elephant as we were driving into the lodge of Sabi Sabi. Then, there were monkeys that live in the trees right at the lodge.  

When we went on our first game drive, we got lucky and saw a leopard. I was so excited that I thought I was in a dream. Afterward, we saw a giraffe, some water buffalo, and zebra. Very cool! We saw three of the "Big 5" that day and we also spotted a honey badger, which is really rare. Our guide hadn't seen one in two years and I got to see one my first day.

The second day we saw a lion, but not just one lion, a whole pride! There were five females and a whole bunch of cubs with them. They were really cute when they wrestled. After that, we had seen four of the "Big 5" African animals. We just needed to see a rhino to finish it off.