I was so excited to share this post with you that I spent an extra day getting it just right.

On day 4 of our Namibia tour, we stay overnight at a really unique accommodation called Cheetah Park. It’s a campground and lodge surrounded by enclosed fields that many cheetahs call home. Each field is several acres in size, covered with trees and bush for the cheetah families to roam and play. A tall fence keeps the cheetahs safe from hunters and natural predators. Employees feed them raw meat daily. In addition to the fields, a few friendly cheetahs stay at the main house where visitors are allowed and encouraged to play with them.

(image found on the Baz Bus Facebook page)

This cracks me up, as does the thought of cheetahs with Boston accents.

After setting up camp and eating lunch, we’re ready to tour the cheetah park. Our guide collects us in the back of a pick-up truck to drive us 3km from the campground to the main house.

Here we are at the front gate of the main house… a large DANGER sign warns unsuspecting visitors to ring the bell first, lest they be surprised by roaming cheetahs.

But there’s nothing to worry about — these cheetahs are used to human interaction; they’re more like big domesticated cats than wild animals.

There are a LOT of cheetah selfies taken during our half-hour visit. More on that in a moment.

Cheetahs need scratching posts just like house cats do… and this tree never stood a chance:

Some playful biting… I hope:

There’s a cute pup wandering the premises; clearly he’s made friends with these giant cats, or else they’d eat him for lunch.

Okay, now the cheetah selfies begin in earnest.

That’s Julia from Brazil on the left in the above photo. I tell her she’s a dead-ringer for an American fitness guru named Jillian Michaels, whom she hasn’t heard of but thanks me profusely after I show her a Google Image search on my phone.

Also, I LOVE this next photo. This cheetah is licking Julia’s hand!

My turn:

It’s mealtime! One of the hosts brings around raw donkey meat for these guys, one hunk per cheetah.

Next we hop back into the pick-up truck for a tour of Cheetah Park. Look at all these smiling faces… I really dig these people:

It’s meal time so the cheetahs are expecting us when we pull up to the various enclosures.

Our guide throws out the pieces of raw meat one at a time as the cheetahs jockey for first dibs and so forth.

Here’s what it looks like in action:

Get this — the cheetahs here go through one entire donkey per day. It’s just chopped up into slabs. One last GIF of the food scramble:

We finish our tour at this enclosure with a mom and two baby cheetahs.

They’re not too patient for photo ops as they know we’re here to deliver food. This mama’s like, “PUT THE CAMERAS DOWN AND GIVE ME THE DONKEY.”

We are happy to oblige!

Now we’re headed back to camp for our own dinner. Anyone have an appetite after watching cheetahs chow down on bloody raw meat?

I’ll wrap up with video footage of the day:

Pretty neat, right? This was one of those days on the itinerary that I couldn’t tell would be cool or overrated. Fortunately it was the former. And the campground itself is great — I’ll be back tomorrow with some photos of our downtime by the pool and campfire under the stars.

I visited Namibia on a 12-day tour from Windhoek to Cape Town with Acacia Africa. They discounted my tour in exchange for blogging and photography; opinions are my own.