Two posts again today.

One and a half hours south of Otjibamba is the Okonjima Nature Reserve, where the AfriCat Organisation is based. The reserve is 47,000 hectares of beautiful savannah ( what the South Africans would call bushveld) and small rocky outcrops.

This really felt like the ‘bush’.

My room there was a pretty little terracotta house standing amongst the long grass and a view, from the bed, through a picture window to the nothingness ( but everythingness) beyond.

Just as I was getting ready to leave the room a spotted jackel shot across the window in front of me. I probably saw the same animal later that night as I walked back from dinner in pitch darkness. That solitary walk, 10 minutes to my room, in the black of night, was not for the fainthearted.

This is a great place, blending conservation and tourism in a nice subtle way. Outside the Windhoek hotels this is the first time, in three and a half weeks, that I have rubbed shoulders with the type of tourists I am familiar with : mixed European, middle class, of working age and the type that can easily drop 300gbp a night for the wholesome experience.

Tonight I could have had the first gin and tonic of my holiday, but decided against it knowing I’d got a 10 minute walk back to my little house in pitch darkness and needed to be jackel ready. I also had a 5.30am start to see cheetahs, before a later afternoon, 4pm, leopard tracking expedition.

The AfriCat NGO, based inside the Okonjima reserve, have 6 captive cheetahs held inside huge savannah type enclosures. They talk about these being their last captive cheetahs, and,” new projects will come in the future”. I’m hoping this is morse code for,’ an attempt to introduce wild cheetahs to the reserve’.

The main draw at AfriCat are the four (once) cubs, found motherless just outside the reserve, and now 12 years old. My photos show their closeness for what are normally solitary animals. What truly beautiful animals. As siblings they are incredibly difficult to tell apart, although our excellent guide, Matthew, quickly scanned them over and gave identities.

The Okonjima story is an interesting one of three generations, from killers to conservationists. Showing that, despite all the pessimism, people can change. It started as a cattle farm of 2200 hectares where- like others – they had killed predators to protect their livestock. Finding that these cheetahs were only being replaced by newcomers, and then, in the next phase, relocating the cats only to find that the cats returned ( one covered 150km to return home) they decided a new approach was needed. One that attempted to combine farming and wild animals. This included buying up lots of adjacent farmland in to increase the size of the reserve to what it is today.

Now, they have become experts on land conservation and renovation. The reserve is unlike other areas I have seen in Namibia. Lots of grassy savannah ( great for high speed cheetahs) but with a smattering of robust trees. I learn on my visit, that it is poor farming methods of the past that has led to an invasive prickly blackthorn bush taking over much of the central areas of the country and with it the hunting ground for the cheetahs. Contributing to their decline. Okonjima believe that if you correct the land conditions, you give wildlife a better chance to thrive.

The Okonjima environment is perfect for leopards, and give, or take (some get under fences, over them via trees, or clever cats, through them if there is a power cut) the reserve has 26 wild leopards. 14 of these are fitted with GPS tracking devices.

We were to track, Lila, a 10 year old female leopard, and her baby daughter.

The process of tracking her was an exciting high stakes drama. Will we find her? Won’t we? Where in her range is she likely to be? Close to where she was last seen? To get a signal at all you need to be in a 3km radius of her collar.

After an hour or so, just over the brow of a hill, we finally picked up the feint bleep…….bleep of her collar on the radio. A further 30 minutes of stopping, raising the antennae and swinging in out of bushes the intermittent bleep……bleep turned to a bleep…bleep…bleep to finally a fast bleep,bleep, bleep,bleep,bleep, and there she was on the ground right, in front of us, stalking her first meal of the day. What a beautiful animal! ( I’m aware that I keep using the word beautiful, but its really the only one that befits all these animals).

The baby was nowhere to be seen, but no doubt tucked away in a safe place somewhere, quietly patiently, waiting.

Yes, these leopards have human contact each day for 15 minutes max (although Lila was intent that our time was going to be shorter than this, by circling around and around in the undergrowth) and vet support is there if seriously hurt, but otherwise these are wild cats.

The great thing about this organisation, from a visitors prospective, is that the five jeeps that left the camp track five different leopards. Maybe I’m easily conned, but it really felt like I was in the wild with that leopard.

A special note goes to our guide, Matthew. Who was superb. He talked about a termite mound for 15 minutes and we were all totally gripped. Then tracked a white rhino, from its hoof prints, when we weren’t even aware the reserve had Rhinos (this is not spoken of for fear of attracting poachers)

The late evening drive finished on the top of the mountain in the reserve to watch the sun setting. The sky filling with this brilliant orange glow. What a day! What a trip!