Cheetahs!

I was blessed to be able to go to Stellenbosch, an hour from Cape Town and heart of the wine region in South Africa with another of our volunteers, Sara and her Dad a couple weeks ago. We visited a couple different wineries, but the highlight of the day was seeing cheetahs at the Spier Winery. They have a cheetah outreach there to educate the public about cheetahs and raise donations to further efforts to protect cheetahs in South Africa. They told us that cheetahs are more docile than most large cats, they usually only go after prey smaller than them and that more often they are the prey themselves, so they said the numbers of them are dwindling. They also said that cheetahs in the wild can be killed by farmers if the farmers believe the cheetahs have attacked their livestock and that the farmers take full advantage of this. They have 13 cheetahs at the outreach and you can actually pay to have a "cheetah encounter" where you can go in with the trainers and pet the cheetahs and spend a little time with them in the yard. We didn't do this, we just paid to get in and view the cheetahs. Above are pics....enjoy! I can't believe the experiences I have already been blessed with since I came to South Africa....God is so good!!