Advertisement
Published: March 18th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Headed back inland this morning to the Little Karoo region. This is a scrubland area famed for its farming of lamb and Ostriches.
It took about an hour and a half to get to Oudtshoorn, the last 30 minutes or so past fields of ostriches. Along the way we saw a sign warning us of tortoises in the road, I told Tim to be careful but just around the next bend he ended up having to slam the brakes on to avoid squishing one which was ambling across the middle of the highway!
Oudtshoorn is the Ostrich Capital of the World (although I'm not sure there were that many contenders) and was made rich on the sale of feathers in the 1800's. According to the Ostrich Museum in 1871 a day old Ostrich chick was worth £8 which was the same value as 240 gallons of Brandy or 2400lbs of dried fruit. The feathers are nearly worthless now as the fashion for massive hats decorated with ludicrous feathers has sadly passed. Nowadays the value is in the meat and leather and we shall no doubt be tucking into some more steaks soon.
We are staying at yet another
lovely B&B. This time it is the Yotclub. It has a pool and air-conditioning both of which are very welcome after Kynsna. (It has cooled down a bit now to a much more manageable 30 degrees)
Today I saw an ostrich, fed an ostrich, sat on a ostrich and ate an ostrich (not a whole one)! We went to an ostrich farm in the morning which was really good. It was nice to see some close up. I did not get too close as they are massive and eye you up in a menacing way. They always look like they are about to peck you! I have seen enough of those TV out-take shows to know to stay out of pecking range.
I now know a lot of ostrich facts but I won't bore you with all of them. My favourite was that an ostriches eyeball is bigger than it's brain!
As well as learning about the ostrich and their various uses in the ostrich industry we also got to do all the silly stuff like standing on an ostrich egg. I was the only person in our group who would do it (why?) so I decided
to spread my weight over two eggs less it broke and I looked silly. Also I would have had to put up with Tim mocking me forever more.
As I said earlier I also got to sit on an ostrich. They are not very comfy and are rather bony! You can sit/hang on while the ostrich runs around but I decided that was way too dangerous!
After we had done everything ostrich related including buying an ostrich feather duster we headed north of Oudtshoorn to the Cango Caves.
At the caves we went on the standard tour (there is an adventure one but that involved climbing through very small gaps including one called the letterbox which is only 28cm high!). The guide was really good and did some great singing when we were all standing in the caves. The caves were really cool and had some great formations in.
After the caves we had time to visit a feather palace (a big house built during the feather boom not a house made of feathers) and have a swim in the pool before it was time to head out and eat some more ostrich!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.213s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 15; qc: 77; dbt: 0.1723s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb