Oudtshoorn - Deep Caves and Big Birds

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Hey guys,

Well after spending some time on the coast we decided to head in land and into the hills to the town of Oudtshoorn. Oudtshoorn is known for two things - the Cango Caves National park and Ostrich Farms! This area in the Swartberg Mountains is super nice and again has almost a Canadian Rockies feel to it with the mountains and tree'ed areas although the Baboons on the roads are a constant reminder of where you really are!

In the morning we decided to take a drive to some waterfalls in the hills and then up to the Caves. The waterfalls were really beautiful and we had them all to ourselves which is always nice. After the falls we were off to the caves. Now when we had originally planned to stop in Oudtshoorn we never really planned on visiting the caves and were unsure of what it would be like.

Well upon arriving at the Caves we found a huge modern complex, definetely not what we expected, but were pleasantly surprised. We signed up for the adventure tour which involved some crawling and sliding through crevices far beyond where the normal walking tour ended. We had been forewarned too of "The Devil's Chimmney" and "The Devil's Post office" which is a cave you have to climb/crawl/slide through approx 2m long and only 27cm wide!! So we start our descent into the caves and enter a huge auditorium which has huge rock formations carved out from the water that are millions of years old. Then we walk further through the caves into two more large chambers with more of these magnificent rock formations, I can't remember the proper names for each but it looks so surreal as though the rock is almost like icing.

After completing the standard portion of our tour we're continuing on to the Adventure portion. This part definetely put us to work and is NOT for anyone claustrophobic!!!! Crawling and sliding through small caves like "the love tunnel" named so because of the full body hug you get as you try to slide through and then towards "The Devil's Worshop" where again you are squeezed through a long section of rock definetely had Tyne and I pushing our body's and me sucking my six pack(gut)! Anyways we survived the 1 km trek through the caves and what an experience, we're both really happy we got to do it as it was something neither has seen or experienced.

The afternoon we went to one of the oldest Ostrich farms in the area to see the big birds up close and check out the farms operations. This was a pretty touristy thing and to be honest we were only there for one reason....Ride the biggest bird in the world! As tacky as it is, it is funny as hell. So we toured the farm, saw the workshops learned about the products made from Ostrichs blah blah blah Finally we get to ride the birds! So it turns out I'm too heavy to ride one, even though I can stand on their eggs no problem! lazy birds! But Tyne is just perfect for Ostrich riding, so she hops on and well I'll let the video tell the rest of the story (turns out the video is to big to upload 😞 ) So I'll tell the story, she rides around the pen riding this huge bird looking "super comfortable" the whole time, it's pretty funny and I hope we can get the video uploaded soon!

Well, having conquered the caves and the birds we're off to Stellenbosch to sample South Africa's finest wines!

Until the next one Stellenbosch Wine tastings and tastings and tastings and tatings ad tstiiiiinnnfggf thud!

Cheers,

Matt & Tyne

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Photos

Cango Caves
The Organ