Results tagged “cheetah” from Intelligent Travel Blog

If there's been an added benefit to home schooling the kids during this trip, it's that Carol and I have had the chance to learn right along with them. I haven't personally watched "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader," but it sounds like a pretty clever premise for a game show to me, especially after looking over the materials Tyler is expected to master as a twelve year old. I can admit that this stuff isn't exactly at the forefront of my memory, particularly sixth-grade math, so after plodding through the core curriculum of their academic studies, we were all excited to get to the more hands-on lessons that this trip was meant to provide in the first place. Nowhere would this opportunity present itself quite as appropriately as in our visit to Namibia.

When it comes to a general understanding of cheetahs, I can proudly say that I had the basics pretty much down.  Over the past few years, I've had the pleasure of working with the Cheetah Conservation Fund, an organization I learned of through my job at National Geographic. Before being introduced to its founder, Dr. Laurie Marker, I was ignorant to the fact that cheetahs were even on the endangered species list. Three years later, I now found myself in Namibia, at the base of the Waterberg Plateau in the Waterberg Conservancy near Otjiwarongo, the cheetah capital of the world and home of the CCF Research and Educational Center. And because this country has more of these majestic cats than any other in the world (about 3,000, or 20% of their total estimated population), it's only fitting that the world's leading efforts to save and understand them be located here.

We arrived to a warm welcome from the center's director, Bruce Brewer, who together with Dr. Marker, helped launch the CCF program in 1990. Even though Laurie was back in the States during our visit, it didn't detract at all from the incredible time we would have here over the next three days. We had barely put our suitcases down when Bruce announced to the boys that we'd just made it in time to feed their three resident cubs--"Cubby Time" as we grew to call it. In hindsight, I was grateful that we'd seen cheetahs in the wild before our arrival, because it made this experience all the more profound. It's hard to truly describe the sensation of what it's like to be this up-close and personal with one of the wildest creatures on earth, but I couldn't help being overcome with emotion. Not only are they incredibly majestic animals--and particularly cute when they're young--there's an almost ethereal feeling you get when you can actually touch them.