The drive to Oudtshoorn was quite spectacular, from Plett we drove down the coast on the main N2 highway to a place called George and then headed inland on the R62 which is a winding road that rises and rises up (in altitude) to the "Klein Karoo" (little Karoo) which is a scenic, semi-arid valley in South Africa's Western Cape, bounded by the Swartberg and Langeberg mountains. Oudtshoorn is the largest town on the Klein Karoo and is famous for Ostrich farming. This took off in the mid 1800s when the demand for feathers (to go in Women's hats) was rampant, many fortunes were lost and made and what was in 1865 nothing more than a farm grew to a town of nearly 2000 people by 1875 this was known as "the first Ostrich boom" when the price of feathers (by weight) almost exceeded that of diamonds! Like all these things there was a massive slump in 1885 as supply exceeded demand, however, after the Anglo-Boer war in 1904 there was again a surge in demand and there followed a period known (unsurprisingly) as the second Ostrich boom! The population rose to 9000 but it wasn't to last, after the first world war demand again slumped. Today the population is over 60,000 but the economy is more diverse, wine, agriculture and mining are all things exploited there currently.
The area is still famous for Ostrich farms but these days the birds are reared for their skin, meat and other products, it's quite strange to be driving along and seeing a field full of these huge birds, and yes, they all move together just like in Jurassic Park!
Our accommodation for two nights was an old farm that had been converted into a B&B, it was a quaint place although in the middle of nowhere, we had a little "bungalow" all to ourselves, it was nice, very quiet and relaxing.
The outside appearance was typically "Cape Dutch" in architectural style, more gables that you can shake a stick at and the surrounding hills reminding me of the film "Zulu", I could just hear Colour Sergeant Bourne saying to Michael Kane "The sentries report Zulus to the southwest, fousands ovvem" in that wonderful Cockney accent. Fortunately there were no Zulu's only rather nice "home cooked" dinners and a tasty little collection of great value Cape wines to sample!
The next day we decided to venture out and visit the Cango Caves, a local attraction and signposted from pretty much everywhere along the main road. The caves themselves are quite impressive, around 4km long (although only a quarter of this is open to the public), there are two tours you can do, easy and hard, the hard one involves scrambling through very tight openings. After our experiences at Robberg we decided to take the easy route, it was still pretty good though.
These caves certainly give Cheddar a run for their money! Some of the chambers are huge and very well illuminated offering dramatic vistas of stalactites and stalagmites (see above) The tour lasts around 40 minutes and the chambers get smaller and smaller as you progress into the mountain, like most caves as you go further the air gets thinner and the temperature rises, I wouldn't fancy going much further than we did but apparently the youngsters on the "difficult tour" do just that!
The formation above reminded me of the sorting hat in Harry Potter, Slytherin it is then..
After visiting the caves we headed back to the hotel, as we approached the Satnav flashed up a location right next to it that had the words "craft beer" in the name, my excitement level jumped! I had researched this place but had no idea there was the possibility of any crafty beer nearby. Anyway we parked the car and wandered down the long gravel drive to the end where there was the Karusa Winery AND craft beer brewery, well what do you know, we eagerly entered the establishment and settled into two of their sampling offerings, one for wine and one for beer, we also ordered a pizza (which was the size of our two heads combined!)
Such a great place, and the wine/beer was excellent, we felt as though we'd landed on our feet that lunchtime and after a pleasant hour or so we headed further up the dirt track to an establishment I'd noticed on the drive up, the Cango Ostrich Farm!
Ostriches are such weird things, part bird part dinosaur, the farm was quite interesting and run tours throughout the day, you get to feed the birds, feel their leather and stand on their eggs which doesn't sound too kind but hey, the eggs can take roughly 150kg of weight before they break, although at the time the guide looked nervously around the group of visitors, some of the larger ladies might have issues and you can't really ask can you..
After visiting the Ostrich farm we retired to our bungalow and later had our final dinner at our hotel, the next morning we checked out early and headed up into the mountains to a famous road called the Swartberg pass which takes you from Oudtshoorn across the range over to a place called "Prince Albert", a rather eccentric and somewhat deviant name for a town if ever there was one!
This little place took our fancy and we stopped for coffee and a toasted sandwich, the building was quite interesting, colonial style and inside it sold everything from cakes to wine to scouring pads, a real old school "general store"! We still had quite a drive ahead of us, around 4 hours across the featureless Karoo, our next destination was a rather unusual stop, an eccentric watering hole in the middle of nowhere you could say, a Victorian railway stop called "Matjiesfontein" to give it it's proper title, read all about it in the next series post.
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