Walking with cheetahs across

Purring big cats, wide open spaces and skies that go on forever - this is the perfect way to clear your mind of city clutter, writes Bridget-Hilton Barber

- 

I had spent a lot of time in the Jozi inner city, had a head full of skyscrapers and honking taxis, and was beginning to think that the fastest land mammal in the world was a Rea Vaya Bus on Commissioner Street when a colleague invited me to do the evocatively named Samara Cheetah Trail in the Great Karoo.

I had never associated the Karoo with cheetahs, but the Samara Karoo Reserve near Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape is one of the best places in the world to see these creatures that can run 80-130km/h, true claimants to the title of fastest land mammal.

It’s a glorious three-hour drive from Gqeberha to Samara. We left behind the ocean and port, the car factories and industrial zones, and headed into sheep and goat country. Angoras, merinos, dorpers. The small town of Jansenville is the centre of the country’s mohair industry.

We stopped at a sleepy shop that had lovely rustic produce, a rusty old car and squeaking windmills.