Oudtshoorn

Day 18 Oudtshoorn
Today we travel through the magnificent Outeniqua Mountains towards Oudtshoorn where we visit the world-famous Cango Caves.  The caves contain spectacular halls and grand limestone formations, and a local guide will tell you all about the cave system, which extends for over 4km. Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

19th December 2013
We made our way to the Cango Caves, they are sensational, well worth the visit, they really do have the whole tourism concept nailed. There were two groups the standard one and the adventure one, both initially see the same things then the adventure group goes further and also does some crawling through some confined spaces. They call one section the letterbox as it's apparently the size of one, we did the standard tour. In the first chamber our guide explained how the first white explorer came down and the brightness of his oil lamp, she then gave us the visual demonstration by switching off the lights. I yelled out "Stop it", most people in our group knew it was me...I had discussed setting up Thomas with Eva earlier, the plan was to do a loud fart next to him and blame Thomas. It was all Eva's idea...

It's hard to describe but they had two large chambers the first had an impressive column that had joined, the stalagmites from the bottom and the stalactites from the top. just around the corner was the cathedral, also impressive. Needless to say there were plenty of stalactites & stalactites to look at.

Once the tour was done we headed out for lunch, Rimson & Owen had prepared lunch by Otis with the chairs nicely set out "under the shade of some coolabah trees". During lunch I bit the inside of my check, so I immediately consulted the best Swiss Doctor (Lina)who suggested suturing and provided much needed sympathy. I was then going to get a second opinion after lunch because I'm sure that's what would have been required, of course any sympathy would have also been greatly appreciated.

However my plans were thwarted when I heard the dropping of metal plates to my left, initially I thought Michael had got a case of the clumsies. That turned out to be incorrect, Esther had taken a drink form her soft drink can when a bee went on a suicide mission and stung her tongue. "Is there a doctor in the house?" Luckily we had the best doctors Switzerland and Germany have ever produced, Medicines sans Frontiers (Eva and Lina) sprung into action and treated Esther. They removed the stinger, iced the patients tongue, the family provided moral support and sympathy, the prognosis was good, Esther was expected to make a full recovery. Whilst I'm saddened by the injury suffered by Esther, she did steal all the medical attention away from me, Esther's like that, she just loves the limelight, I think she got bitten deliberately.

From there we headed to the ostrich farm, the first part was great interesting and entertaining. Lina and Michael got a ostrich massage, very amusing. The ostrich stands behind the punter and is feed from the front, it's neck then "massages" the punter.
However as a group I think we didn't like watching people sitting on the ostriches posing for photos. At the beginning they stated it was too hot for riding ostriches and the maximum weight of the rider was 75Kgs, now the reality was there were more than a few over the weight limit people getting on board the ostrich, which you could clearly see made it's legs buckle.From there it was on to our tented accommodation, the campsite was pretty ordinary, they stuck us right in the back corner by the road and what smelled like a sewage drain. But Esther, Thomas, Michael, Lisa and I put up our tents and headed for the pool. I didn't go in, I could see it was freezing, the funny thing was all the Europeans sun baking whilst I sat in the shade.

Tonight was also the last dinner with Matthew & Bill, the table was set out in the carport of Owen, Rimson and Mika's room, chalet 33.