Finally we left the mountains behind us and arrived in Marienfluss: a wide plane framed by mountains on each side. We had a great view at all this space. There we were picked up by car and driven the last 20km to the Kunene to a proper tented camp with toilets, showers and warm water. We spent two days there, going for short trips, one day upstream, one day downstream. This involved some rock climbing and traversing in places because we wanted to stay close to the river. It is a beautiful area and I could have carried on hiking for another 100km down to Kunenemund. Then we set off for a two days drive with the Unimog to cover the 250km of bad road back to Opuwo. We had a flat tyre twice and it is hard work to change the wheel of an Unimog, but our men managed it well. We passed a point called “red drum” where three roads meet. There is literally only a red drum with an old, damaged emergency telephone and a sign for each direction. Nevertheless, this point was marked as Red Drum on my map of Namibia, so I would have expected at least a village there! Back in Opuwo it was difficult to get used to civilization again. We carried on driving in our own cars for another few hundred km and stayed at a cheetah farm and camp. They have 19 cheetahs there and we were taken on a drive to feed them. It was interesting to watch these cats so closely, fighting for the food. In a separate enclosure was a female with three little ones, only a few months old. It was cute to see them playing on a fallen tree. Also on the property was a 7 months old giraffe which came to the farmer sucking on his thumbs and drinking milk from a bucket. The farmer also had two tame cheetahs and we could stroke them and listen to their purring!
