Oudtshoorn
SOUTH AFRICA
Heaven in the Hillsides
By LYNDI
Monday, May 9, 2011
If South Africa’s delicious wines, stunning coastlines, vibrant cities and close encounters with Great Whites didn’t impress us enough – this next stop made us fall in love. Enter Oudsthoorn: friendly people, nice hostels and animals whose brains can fit in a teaspoon! South Africa just rose a few more notches.
After summiting several high passes enroute to Oudsthoorn, Aaron and I pulled into Backpacker’s Paradise in the driving rain around 5pm. We asked at reception where the best place was to set up our tent and the worker just looked at us and said, “Oh man – it’s pouring. Just stay in a dorm for the same price”. Sold.
The whole reason we drove out of the way to this small country town was to visit the Cango Caves just north of the town. However, after having a minor budget freakout due to car rental, gas fill-ups at $5 per gallon, and (awesome) shark diving – we decided that we could just visit a plethora of caves at home.
And instead we would do what I’m sure God had intended us to do in the first place: ride ostriches. The only logical way you can explain us going 60km out of our way, only to find out that pea-brained animals offer ground tours, is divine intervention.
Luckily the next day the clouds parted and God shed his light down on the ostrich farms and Aaron and I knew it was indeed meant to be. We took ol’ Sparky out to the Safari Ostrich Farm for a 35 rand tour – only to find out they weren’t offering ostrich rides because the ground was wet. Well – we didn’t come all this way to look at a bunch of birds! We were ready to ride! No… no. We were born to ride.
So we headed out to find a different farm that would let us mount these majestic creatures – and found just that at Highgate Farms a bit further down the road.
Carol-Anne greeted us at the gate and told us the tour would cost 70 rand each. Ouch. I mean – we like ostriches, but do we like $11 ostrich tours? Fortunately – or perhaps… providentially? – Aaron pulled out a discount coupon that he’d found at reception at the backpacker’s and flashed it at the payment counter – and we waltzed in for 38 rand each.
The tour started with Carol-Anne showing us different products you can make with ostrich feathers such as feather dusters and decorations for Rio Carnival and then she showed us the incubator with all the enormous eggs (about the size of a cantaloupe – it feeds 10 people!) and finally to the birds themselves. She gave us corn kernels to feed the ostriches, though warned us that because they don’t have teeth (or brains for that matter), they will eat anything you put in front of them. Corn, rocks, coins… and fingers. One ostrich nearly took off my ring finger in a desperate search for corn kernels, though you can’t call it a bite so much as a clap, so it really wasn’t that bad.
And then for the grand finale. We hopped back in the car and drove to the farm where we were able to get up close and personal with the ostriches. First we went into a nesting site where Carol-Anne equipped us with thorny branches in case we needed to defend ourselves. As you can imagine, any nesting bird is normally very defensive of their eggs – luckily ostriches are so stupid that they don’t really know what’s going on. They do have an enormous claw on each foot, so if they attack they could actually probably rip you open, so our thorn branch was supposed to scare them off so that it won’t scratch their sensitive eyes.
Here’s a tip for any future encounters with wild ostriches – if they approach, you are supposed to lay face down on the ground and squirm like a snake to scare them off. If you are a bit flustered and forget to squirm, they think your head is an egg and will sit on it. For 42 days. So don’t forget.
Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah – we were standing on their eggs. Apparently their eggshells are 2mm thick and a grown human can stand on them (in the sand) without breaking them or harming them. Normal (and by normal, I mean “reasonably intelligent”) birds will reject any eggs touched by humans. But again, these birds are incomprehensively dumb and if they smell something on their eggs, just flip them over so they can’t smell it anymore and continue to incubate them.
And next – the highlight. We went into a small pen where there were about 20 ostriches running around – some with the goofiest looking saddles I’ve ever seen – and the workers brought an ostrich forward for us to hop on.
Perhaps the funniest part was that they put small hoods over their heads so that they don’t freak out that a human is climbing on their back – once you’re on they don’t know what’s going on – but it did make them look rather like an interrogation victim. So after we quizzed them about the whereabouts of their weapons of mass destruction we hopped on, held onto their wings, and we were off!
Literally, my ostrich ran around in circles, sometimes running into other birds. It didn’t help that Aaron’s bird was chasing mine around the pen, but with the absurdity of the situation, I was in hysterics. I was on the back of an ostrich named William, who probably didn’t even know I was there because he’s so stupid, with a yellow saddle, being chased by Aaron’s ostrich in circles. I could not stop laughing.
The grand finale was a short ostrich derby where three workers climb on the backs of three different ostriches and race them down a raceway. Again, for the most part the birds ran the right way, but one started off running into a wall. Hilarious.
So, our stomach muscles hurting and our dreams fulfilled, we returned to Backpacker’s Paradise, watched the classic “Three Musketeers” (where ironically, Charlie Sheen plays a pious Musketeer) and enjoyed the company of our fellow travelers around a bonfire. We never made it to the Cango Caves but we also never imagined how much fun touring an ostrich farm could be. So whenever we get back to the States, we’ll visit plenty of caves to make up for our delinquency in Oudsthoorn and laugh out loud every time we look at ostriches in fond memory of William who will surely be with his Creator in Bird Heaven.
