Namibia Part 4

The Harnas Wild Life Foundation

A few days before Albert and the others went back home, we went to the Harnas Wildlife Foundation. It’s about an hour and a half drive away from Gobabis.

Harnas is a wildlife park where you can go on a safari trip by 4wd and on foot and watch lions, cheetas, crocodiles et cetera. But the Harnas Wild Life Foundation is more than just a park where you can watch wildlife. Here they help injured and orphaned animals grow up and they prepare them to go back into the wild again. If you are lucky you can even cuddle baby lions, cheetas and leopards if they’re around.

In our case we were able to get really close to two cheetas. An old cheeta fella named Goeters and a young female cheeta named Duma. Goeters has been around here since the beginning of the Harnas Wild Life Foundation project (26 years) and is basically as tame and friendly as a housecat, just a whole lot bigger! We also played with a young giraffe. Be carefull though, because he tends to kick every once in a while when he’s in a real playfull mood (there are signs warning for this in the park). The giraffe walks freely next to the bungaloo houses, so enjoy your breakfast with a giraffe breathing down your neck or stealing your food

Another nice thing to know is that Albert and Judith have been coming here for quite some years now, and they love Goeters so much that they even named their own dog in Holland after the cheeta. When Albert explained this to the owner of Harnas, she really appreciated to hear this.

Have a look at the pictures below, they’ll give you some idea of what you can see in Harnas. And for the record… I totally fell in love with this cheeta Duma  (as you will see in some of the pictures).

The last two pictures (with me, Judith and ‘our’ giraffe) are made by Emma Bloemhof. And the pictures of me and Duma were made by Judith.