Easter! It was the most adventurous and interesting Easter ever! It was still pouring rain in the morning and we had no power. It was also make your own pancakes day and Evan and I flipped them in the outdoor kitchen.
We then got on the road and drove to Oudtshoorn, an inland town for our activities that day. We went to the Cango Caves and did the Adventure Tour. We were a few minutes late, but I had made a reservation ahead of time and they still let us go.
The caves were epic! There were huge cavernous areas with beautiful limestone configurations. The Adventure tour entailed some adventurous parts, such as 172 steps in a cavern, a hole to climb through called the coffin (because of its shape, not because anyone died there), climbing up through a chimney chute sort of thing (as in wiggling ourselves upwards through a tunnel), sliding on our bellies through thin spaces, crouching in tunnels, and going through the love tunnel (called that because it hugs you from both sides). It was super fun! Also, it was surprisingly very humid and hot in the caves.
Just down the road from the Cango Caves is the Cango Ostrich Farm. Oudtshoorn is known for its ostrich farms. We had a nice lunch at the farm, with many of us eating various forms of ostrich (I had ostrich carpaccio salad).
Then we went on an ostrich tour. It was cool to learn how to tell if ostrich leather is fake or real and learn some of the history around ostriches and their anatomy. We visited the incubators and learned how to tell if an egg is fertilized or not, and of course visited the ostriches.
A few boys got to “kiss” an ostrich by having a piece of grain in their mouth that the ostrich plucked from their lips. This was hilarious, and the funniest part of the whole day. We got to sit on an ostrich if we wanted to, but unfortunately we could not walk around riding them as the ground was too slippery from the recent rain. So I sat on an ostrich! I also got an ostrich neck massage, but holding feed in a bucket by my face.
Ostrich necks are surprisingly soft. I had to take off my jewelry because ostriches like shiny things (they pick out shiny rocks to put in their stomachs to help them digest). I also stood on ostrich eggs, which are super hard and don’t break even with all your weight on it.
We then drove to Wilderness to hang out on the beach a bit before getting dinner and then checking into our hostel in Mossel Bay. This turned into an interesting episode though... too embarrassed to write about it in this blog but some of you guys out there might know the story already!
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