The Ostrich!
It was hot already in the early morning when the sun rose over a clear sky. We took down the tents (tents will always be down and packed into the truck before breakfast, so we will leave as soon as possible after breakfast) and drove up to the Karoo semi-desert in the shadow of the Swartberg mountan range towering over the landscape. We were heading for Oudtshoorn, the small town known for it’s ostrich farms and ancient, huge cave systems called Cango Caves.
We arrived at one of the ostrich farms, and watched other people riding – but none of us wanted to ride. Well I wanted to – but the weight limit is 75 kilos to ride ostriches and they had a scale that I could not fool. It showed 80+ kg when I stood on it and shattered my illusions. I’ll stop drinking beer, start running and so on, you know… About the same promise people give after every hangover. Welmoed posed, however, on an ostrich.
Three of the girls in the gang had ”ostrich shoulder massage” – you stand with your back to them, next to the fence. In your hand you will be holding a bucket with food. The birds are like Frix – always hungry and when they eat from the bowl they ”massaged” the shoulders by the movement of their necks!
We learned that an ostrich egg can withstand a weight of up to 90 kg – the guide stood in a bunch of eggs!
Cango Caves
After the ostrich farm, we drove to a rest area near the Cango Caves, ate our Nomad sandwiches and went up to the caves.
Here, we had a choice – the tour price includes the standard tour of about 45-50 minutes, but for 11 Rands extra we could take the ”Adventure Route”, which goes deeper and is harder, with passages that are not higher than 35-45 cm in so you had to crawl, or 27-30 cm wide passages that you can only get through with crayfish walking on your toes … Of course, I choose the difficult route and was joined by Amarins, Welmoed, Han and Roland.
Our guide was a short, slender guy who can best be described as ”flamboyant”.
Down in the caves we went, in the great first cave I tricked the others to sing ”Happy Birthday” to me because ”it was my birthday.” Yep, the acoustics were amazing!
In the 60 – and 70’s the actually had concerts here in the cave, but it had to stop because people slipped further into the system and broke the stalactites and stalagmites that had taken millennia to form.
The passage ”Love Tunnel”, about 35 cm wide and had to be negotiated by crayfish walking, gets its name because ”it squeezes you from all sides”.
A funny passage was ”The Chimney”, a cavity which is narrow in all directions and as we were climbing in the dark and tried to feel where to step with our toes, our guide was behind and knew exactly how we would do.
He was actually one of the best guides I ever had – he was calm and stable, sensetive to our moods and response, and focused on one of the girls (no named mentioned) who were the most nervous and talked her through even the most difficult passages.
We came out sweaty (it was hot even before we had to make the effort) and dirty after having slipped, slid and climbed. We had certainly earned the beer that was waiting in the evening!
Cango Caves Adventure is highly recommended for anyone who want to do something different than just walk around and look at the rock formations.
Pool & thunder
We drove into Oudtshoorn to our camp, Kleinplaas, where we pitched our tents. A heavy thunderstorm rolled in over the city and it smelled of heavy smoke throughout the afternoon and evening, a fire was going on just outside the city (we saw the fire as a snake of red when we took off again the next day – it was a major piece of forest that burned !)
Han and I wanted to jump into the pool right away, but Amarins did not let us – bathing in a pool in a thunderstorm? Nah!
But we did it anyway and was soon joined by a Amarins and her sister. We splashed and played with a ball so that none of the other guest dared to venture into the water… exept one brave soul.
Laundry Service?
After dinner, the Dutch sisters and I wanted to share a washing machine, so we bought a token for the washing machine and one for the dryer. It would be enough with one for each, said the friendly man at the reception so we started the laundry, went to dinner with the others and after dinner we moved the laundry to the dryer.
While the dryer worked, we returned to the others and played cards, took a few jokes and drank whiskey. Or, Han, Roland and I was drinking whiskey, as were the only ones liking it.
When we went back to the laundry room to pick up the laundry, we found out the hard way that one token was not enough. The laundry was half dry and no more tokens were to come by as the reception closed 19:00. I walked around among the other campers and asked if anyone had a token to sell but no.
Since was a risk for rain and the air was smoky because of the fire, we didn’t want to hang the laundry outside, so… well, we hung it on everything possible inside the laundry room. On the chairs, desks, doors …
We went to bed around 23 o’clock in all cases, after checking the laundry one last time – found a former Nomad-guide who was sleeping in the laundry room, his partner promised us they would not steal our laundry, but I didn’t even think they would before she said they wouldn’t…