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A man whom I highly respect told me before I left on this trip that I should "expect the unexpected," and now I can really appreciate what that statement meant. The short two weeks that I have been on this trip heading north through Africa have been accompanied with a few trials, a lot of drama, and a couple experiences that have completely shocked me.
We left Swakopmund, Namibia after about three days and headed north again passing through rocky canyons and deserts until we reached a more savannah-like area, which is the beginning of the region where most of the famous African animals reside. Here, we stopped off at a cheetah game park that works to preserve the cheetahs and provide a refuge for them when they are captured by farmers.
At the farm there we three tame cheetahs that we were able to play with, and nineteen wild cheetahs. Since the game park is several thousand acres, the only way that we could see the cheetahs was when their keepers went to feed them, and we hopped onto the back of a truck and drove into the park to watch the cheetahs feed off large chunks of donkey meay. The cheetahs attacked the meat and each other until one would proclaim its dominance over the meat and run off with it to eat it. Meanwhile, the others would snarl and snap at the keepers in anticipation of the next chunk that would be thrown. The process was quite exhilarating because the cheetahs had the freedom to come as close to us as they wished and nothing prevented them from attacking the little flat bed trailer and truck on which we were all standing. The feeding got even more exciting when we got stuck in the mud and several of us had to jump out of the truck to help push it out while the cheetahs were trying to protect their breakfast.
Leaving the park, we were delayed because one of the other trucks got stuck in the mud, and we spent about three hours digging them out. Then we had to re-build the road so that we could cross the section ourselves, and were completely covered in mud for the rest of the day. Most of us would have actually enjoyed this part of the trip because it fell into the category of "expecting the unexpected, and the adventure that everyone wants from Africa. However, the side story of this venture is that the previous night one of our good friends, Andy (a 42 year old British man), completely snapped mentally during dinner and literally went insane in front of all of us. Our other good friend Gus tried to console him, but he rotated through several personalities and became somewhat hostile and seemingly suicidal. Unfortunately, he never recovered from his mental collapse. So, as we were spending time helping get trucks out of the mud, he was slowly drifting further and further into a state of despair, which made all of us a bit uneasy being on the bus with him for several more hours. When we arrived at the next town, our guide and Gus took Andy to the hospital where they proclaimed him "mentally insane," and then they were forced to backtrack several hours by a taxi to take Andy to the psychiatric hospital in the capitol of Namibia because there was none closer.
We found out later that he had a family history of schizophrenia and that he was able to get sent back to England safely. Meanwhile, we continued on to our last stop in Namibia, the Etosha National Game Park. This park is situated around the Etosha pan, which is the largest salt pan in the world and can easily be viewed from space. However, even though the pan is quite a site, the park's animals are the real attraction of the place because there is an abundance of animals in a small area that does not exist in many other places. Hopefully, we will see a lot of animals, and we will not have many more bad experiences on the trip. Till next time, cheers.
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