A cheetah licked my frisbee!

Hi again :) well, last week, my family and I along with the rest of this year's VSO volunteers all went to a place called Mariantel right on the edge of the Kalahari desert ! We stayed in a really nice lodge just out of Mariantelle called "Lapa lange Lodge". Once we had arrived, after a 4 1/2 hour drive, we were shown to where we were going to be staying for the next week and it was great! We were staying in a 4 bedroomed chalet with two bathrooms, a kitchen with a bar and a livingroom leading outside! We were sharing the chalet with another family from Canada, with an eight year old girl called Kaia (Kiya) and her seven year old brother Jake. Their parents Yvonne and Cameron had their own bedroom, my parents did as well, Cam and Jake had their own room and I shared a bedroom with Kaia.

In the morning once everyone had woken up we went for breakfast at seven o'clock sharp, yawn :) after breakfast the adults went to the conference room to talk about their jobs so the kids just went of and we just did our own thing. About half an hour before lunch I went back to the chalet to pour a drink for everyone when I looked up at the waterhole and saw four adult ostriches and four chicks and they were so cute. I decided to name two of them I called the adult one flump and the baby one cupcake. There was also a swimming pool, well I say I mean a 2 meter long puddle filled with slimy frogs which I only found out about after I jumped into the pool, and boy did I get a fright :O "Ahhh....!"

The next day once the adults had gone off to do some more training I suggested that we should go to the giant cheetah enclosure to have a look at the cheetah. This was all going well until Cameron decided to have a game of frisbee and guess what? Yes, of course, it went over the fence. The boys ran off leaving Kaia and I to rescue the frisbee, great.

We decided to go and tell the barmaid in the main lodge what had happened so she told the cheetah feeder. He didn't speak english so we couldn't really understand what he was saying but he tied a coat hanger to a really long pole and stuck in through the fence but it wasn't long enough. He said "me go get car" and he came back in an open bakkie, which Kaia and I jumped in, and went through the gate. He chucked a bit of chicken leg to distract the cheetah and quickly got the frisbee.

Eilidh Rose