The Cheetah Breeding Centre and The Gun
Here I am patting a Cheetah at a breeding centre. The Cheetah here are all tame but any sign of small children send them crazy, they go into a hunting mode. Patting the Cheetah is very much the same touch as that with a dog however they pur like a very loud cat. Some interesting facts about Cheetah I learnt is that they can go from 0 - 100kms per hour in just 3 seconds flat!
I guess the memory that will stand out most in my mind as being sureal in Africa is the trip from the Hotel to Johanasburg airport. We were introduced to the taxi driver whose name was Prince. He was a nice guy, telling us about his holidays etc.. In the conversation we failed to notice that all of the instruments on the dashboard failed to work and just 6 kms away from the airport we had run out of petrol. Prince pulled over to the side of the highway and said "oh, when this usually happens I just run down the road and get some petrol." We were all thinking 'this is a usuall thing?' Any way we all looked a little worried, I'm not sure how many of you out there know of the dangers in Johanasburg with car jacking, but it is quite legal to put flame throwers on your car so needless to say it is pretty bad.. Prince senced that we were worried and to reassure us he said " don't worry, I have a gun." he pulled a 9mm pistol out of the glove box and handed it to Mat ( the guy in the picture ). After showing us all how to use the gun he was off. You can imagine what was going on in our minds now. We didn't want to get car jacked and we certainly didn't want to shoot anyone. We just locked all of the doors and looked out at the windows. everyone looked like a potential carjacker. Were we paranoid or what! Not long after that Prince was back with some petrol but it is an experience I will not soon forget.
