Cango Caves and Ostrich Farm, Oudtshoorn
- On August 20, 2014
- By victoria
- In Africa, Oudtshoorn, South Africa
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After a lovely drive with BazBus from Cape Town to George and a 1 hour hostel transfer to Oudtshoorn, I arrived at Backpackers Paradise, a lovely hostel in the centre of Oudtshoorn, where I had a very tasty dinner of ostrich sausage and kebab.
The hostel runs tours of the surrounding area, they would drive you about, or you could take a bike out, so I took one of their mountain bikes out for the day! I was dropped off at the top of Swartberg Pass, which sits at 1583m in the Swartberg Mountain Range. From here it was 30km of downhill on mostly rough road. What a brilliant start to the day, it was so good to get back out on a bike and the views were fantastic! I had a head wind most of the way, which stopped me from going too fast down the winding road.
This took me to the Cango Caves, they sit in a limestone ridge alongside the Swartberg Mountains and consist of dripstone caverns, huge halls and towering stalactite and stalagmite formations. I took a tour of the caves which went through two great big halls and into small winding tunnels, it was amazing. The fist thing I noticed when I got into the tunnels was that the temperature had risen and the air was warm and stuffy and lacking in oxygen. A few of the tunnels we went through were rather tight! In one we had to side step through, another we had to crawl up a chimney and the last we had to crawl through on our stomachs. Not advisable for anyone who suffers from claustrophobia! Our guide told us that a lady had once gotten stuck for 11 hours, as the tunnel was too small for her (that’s their polite way of saying, “you’re too big for the tunnel”).
From the caves I carried on down the Cango Valley for 16km towards Oudtshoorn, and stopped at the Cango Ostrich Farm. There are a number of ostrich farms in the valley and you can see ostriches roaming around the fields. Ostriches are bred here for their meat, eggs, feathers and skin, all the restaurants and shops sell ostrich food and products. I took a short tour of the farm which was quite interesting. Ostriches are the largest bird on the planet and can run upwards of 70km hr, but cannot fly, and they are the second fastest animal after the leopard. They are a polygamous animal and the male can have a number of partners, but if the female dies the male will not take another partner. When an egg is laid the female incubates it during the day and the male during the night, this is partially why the female is grey in colour and the male black, to be more camouflaged, when they switch over incubating duties, they turn the egg so it receives equal amounts of heat.
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