Ostriches in Oudtshoorn

My last night in Cape Town was not nearly as restful as I had hoped it would be. Around 1am there was a bit of a commotion outside of the hostel and someone accused someone else of robbing and assaulting them. Things escalated really quickly and soon people were threatening to cut each other’s faces off! This was all happening right outside my window and while it was pretty clear that only one guy was actually crazy and the other had just gotten sick of trying to reason with him, I was not feeling overly safe at the moment. A group of people repetitively tried to reassure the crazy guy that his wallet had not been stolen but he had left it on the floor so someone put it in his wallet for him but he just wasn’t having it. This probably went on for at least half an hour. The crazy guy wanted to go look for his missing property (even though it was in his wallet) but everyone insisted he stay at the hostel. This was when things really started to go down hill.

I was lucky enough to share a room with crazy pants. He came in to the room and was still shouting nonsense. The hostel security staff forced him into a bed and he quickly passed out. I hoped this was the end of the madness but he woke up again about 15 minutes later and started shouting about the stock market and how much money he had in his bank account. Another man in the room yelled at him to shut up which soon turned into the two of them threatening each other. The sane man went and asked security to get rid of crazy pants but they just came in the room and told him to shut up. He did. I actually managed to doze off for a minute before I woke up to crazy pants shouting for help. He needed to pee and couldn’t get down from the top bunk and was blaming it on a broken rib. The same man who told him to shut up earlier told him that there was a ladder on the bed, crazy pants responded with “I know there’s a ladder but I’m not a pussy”.  So instead of taking the “pussy” way down he shouted for help for several more minutes, and even threatened to piss of the bed. When no one came to his rescue he eventually jumped and landed with a loud thud. The other man again tried to get crazy pants thrown out of the hostel but no luck. This craziness went on all night. I think I got about 5 minutes of sleep all night long.

When I checked out in the morning the staff asked me if I enjoyed my stay so obviously I complained about the night before. They agreed that the way the whole thing was handled was completely unacceptable and apologized. One of the staff told me later on that they had the manger on standby and as soon as crazy pants woke up he would be dealt with. This made me even angrier. Why did he get to have a nice sleep after he kept a whole room of people up all night long? Wake him up and kick his ass out now!

I was angry at how the situation was handled but I was oh so excited to be leaving the craziness behind me as I boarded the bus on the way to Oudtshoorn. It was the first leg of my hop-on-hop-off tour and it went fairly smoothly. The bus was completely full for about two hours but then people started getting off and people had room to spread out and I was able to catch up on some of the sleep I had missed out on the night before.

We arrived in George in the early afternoon where I transferred into a shuttle vehicle to get to Oudtshoorn. I managed to befriend three people from Ireland during this trip by making a human centipede joke after one of them made a comment about the driver being a bit dodgy. I spent most of the evening chatting with them and an English girl in the lounge at the hostel but called it an early night, as I was still exhausted from the night before.

The next day we all hopped back in the shuttle with our not so dodgy driver and made our way to the Cango Caves. We decided to take the adventure tour, which involved a fair amount of climbing and crawling. The five of us decided to play a game where we bet on who would cry or freak out during the tour. There were a lot of good candidates including several girls who were dressed inappropriately for the activity and had clearly spent a significant amount of time on their makeup but I decided to bet on a couple who I referred to as “team athletic”. Team athletic was dressed from head to toe in Under Armour and had fanny packs (bum bags for those of you who aren’t from North America). They just looked a little too put together and I was wondering if maybe they were over compensating for something. I bet on the right horse because right as things started to get intense the girl from team athletic backed out. I just wish we had bet money on this game!

The rest of the tour was fairly intense and involved squeezing through some pretty small spaces. The hardest part was climbing up the devils chimney. You had to put your hands above your head, stick them into a small opening and then turn, you then had to push off with one of your legs, turn back onto your stomach, and wiggle your way up like a worm. The guide made it sound like this area was pitch black so I was pretty nervous about it but once I stuck my head in I was fine.

After finishing the tour of the caves we made our way to Cango Ostrich Farms for another tour. We learned that ostriches in the wild typically lay no more than 15 eggs a year but at the farm they steal the eggs from the birds and because they are “dumb animals” (this is what our tour guide said) they just keep laying and sometimes lay up to 80 eggs in a mating season. I didn’t feel great about this but I was about to participate in something much crueler so I couldn’t really hold a grudge. We also learned that ostriches mate for 10 days! Can you imagine?!

After learning about the eggs we went to meet some ostriches. One of the first birds we met was a dwarf and even though it was 6 years old it was smaller than a one-year-old ostrich. The guide told us about the amazing eyesight of ostriches and demonstrated how they are able to turn their necks in crazy ways since they have 17 vertebrae in their necks compared to our 7. We also got to see some cute little baby ostriches that were between one and three weeks old. We also got to pet one of the babies and their feathers were a little prickly and not soft like had expected.

The next part of the tour was the part that I had been looking forward to but also apprehensive about for months, ostrich riding. I wasn’t entirely sure if I was going to go through with this but at the very least I was going to keep an open mind about it. After watching a few of the guys take their rides I was still apprehensive but I soon learned that the jockeys stay with the bird for female riders and actually pull them of the bird when the time comes and made my decision to go for it. You wrap your legs around the front of the bird then wrap the wings of the bird around yourself and hold on tight. I felt bad about this because you had to hold on tight and I could only imagine it felt about as good for the bird as having your hair pulled. I yelped as the bird started to move and then let out a girly scream as it picked up speed. It was scary but not for the reasons I thought. I was originally worried about riding the bird because they can kill you with a single kick but I actually felt relatively safe during the experience I was just worried about falling off of it.

Our ostrich tour ended after we took turns standing on ostrich eggs, and we loaded back in to the shuttle. My new friends had to make their way back to George to catch their bus to Cape Town and I was staying for another night because the bus I needed to catch doesn’t operate on Sunday’s. I spent the rest of the day relaxing. I lounged by the pool for a while and went for a wander into town but kept things pretty low-key.

Today I had hoped to go hang out with some Meerkats even though it would have meant waking up at 5am but unfortunately the tour was fully booked. The upside to this was that I was able to sleep in. I have spent the morning relaxing and will soon be catching the shuttle to George, followed by the bus to Port Elizabeth. I’m not too sure how I will spend my time there but I am looking forward to more adventures.