Our diggs for the few days we were here was the Ibis Place Country Cottages, run by Belgian ex-pats Ronny and Fara van Camp. It was a "beautiful" (Ronny's favourite superlative) farm stay and the we all loved it, especially Sean. Feeding Silver the donkey, rounding up the chickens, not getting too close to the pigs and the sheep, swimming in the pool and playing with the owners kids all made for good fun for our lot after a day's sightseeing.
One group of animals that was not quite so welcome but were fun to see anyway were the Vervet monkeys. These cheeky little critters live in the woodland behind the cottages and, we were warned, would come down into the houses looking for food (or anything else that they fancied). Of course one afternoon Lea and I went for a walk with the boys around the dam and when we were on the other side looking back, what could we see but three or four of the little blighters making their way to the door we left open! We were expecting to hear a scream seconds later from Ash who had stayed behind, but the trooper that she is, shooed them out and closed the door. My brave girl!!
I digress as the reason we were here, as I said before, was to see some of the sites of the region. North (yes I halve my bearings right [as in correct] now) over the Outeniqua Ranges is Ostrich country where we visited an Ostrich farm which was quite fun. These birds are huge and fully grown, can get upwards of 150kg and 2m in height! The owners must have known us Aussies were visiting as they even had a pair of emu's there. Now I thought emu's were big but they look positively tiny when compared to an ostrich!! The highlight was the boys each getting a ride on an ostrich. Sean had a grin from ear to ear and I'm not sure if the look on Tim's face was terror or excitement!! Ash piked out - not so brave anymore!!
Out near the ostrich farm are the famous Cango Caves. We had an option when visiting these caves, the standard tour or the adventure tour. Now I'm up for an adventure now and again (we're in South Africa after all) however the adventure this place was offering was didn't strike a chord with me, nor the rest of the family. It involved going deeper into the cave system through numerous crawl throughs getting down to 27cm wide for up to 6 meters (this one affectionately known as the letterbox). With that said, it was the standard tour for us!! I've only ever been to Jenolan caves once, was many years ago when I was a kid and I can't really remember what they were like (sorry mum and dad!) but these caves were aw inspiring! The photos I took do not do them justice so you'll have to take my work for it (or see them for yourselves)! Our guide (who's name I can neither remember nor pronounce even if I could) demonstrated the terrific acoustics of the cave by singing the South African national anthem and Qongqothwane or the traditional Clicking Song, which was popularised internationally by Miriam Makeba in the early 70's. It was a treat to hear and I'm sure he did it to receive extra tips at the end of the tour to which we gladly obliged.
From the desert to the coast, the next day we hired canoes and paddled up the Touw River in the Wilderness Tsitsikamma National Park followed by a walk through the forest and a swim at the waterfall. We were planning on having a picnic lunch at the falls but that only works if you remember to bring the food!!! After a swim and a bit of a rest, we headed back to where we left the canoes only to find that our two were no longer there! Thinking some other paddlers had taken the wrong ones by mistake, we had no choice but to take two others. At about the halfway mark of our return journey, we saw some kids playing about in our two boats!! They probably came from the nearby campsite and pinched them however when i asked them where they got them from, they assured me that they had hired them. Yea sure - the kids were 8!! There was nothing we could do about it but in hindsight, I do hope the kids were decent enough to take them back to where they took them from after their illicit rampage or else there would have been some unhappy people behind us wondering how to get back!!! In all it was a pleasant enough trip however I left feeling that the river and the falls were not as spectacular as they were made out to be in everything that I had read about them (maybe I was just hungry??).
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