Township kiddies

If you ever go on a proper Township Tour the guide will probably take you to one of the local schools or creches that their company supports. One of the tours I went on a little while ago took us to a community project that started as a feeding scheme for small children and developed into a day care and pre-school. Although the tour company gives the project a percentage of the fee that tourists pay for the tour, visitors always make some donations to the school or take along stationary and the like. Through the help of tourists many such projects are run throughout the townships of Port Elizabeth.

The kids always love it when the visitors take pictures of them during the visits. After the photos is taken they all line up to see the image on the camera's screen. The photo may not be a artistic picture of any kind, but I love the emotion from the kids. It doesn't matter what kind of circumstances these kids live in, they are always happy, laughing and playing. Enjoying life, even if they are being short changed. I often think that kids in rich neighbourhoods can learn something from these kids on how to enjoy childhood.

Arium Lily

By far one of my favourite flowers is the Arium Lily. The grow very much wild in the Tsitsikamma forest because of the high rainfall and lot of water there. Some of the are huge compared to those you see in people's gardens. When I used to be a tourist guide I got to visit the Tsitsikamma very often, but alas I haven't been for a while. This pic I took on the Mouth Trail in the Tsitsikamma National Park next to a little stream and waterfall. I just thought the background went very well with the flower.

Miniature Trains

On the first Sunday of each month the Port Elizabeth Model Locomotive Society brings out their trains to the delight of young and old.

I'm normally very stoked (excuse the expression) when I get to go on the little steam engine. It actually runs on real coal and water just like a real steam engine. It even blows off steam like his big brothers.

Each engine would tow about three little seater wagons and the trip takes you in a big figure eight. The cost is next to nothing. About R2.50 per ride. Calculate that when the US Dollar is about R10 and the British Pound about R18.

As this photo shows, the ride is as popular with the "big" kids as it is with the little ones. I for one always get excited when the Damselfly suggests that we take the Rugrats for a visit to the trains. I wonder when we will go again.

Caves and Crocs

Today is the last day of our tour and we will make visits to the other two big tourist attractions in Oudtshoorn.

Our first stop is the world famous Cango Caves. Situated about 20kilometres outside of town in the Swartberg (Black Mountains), the caves are the best known caves in South Africa and one of the most visited show caves in the world. The word Cango is a Khoisan word that means "water between hills". The Khoisan used to live in the entrance of the caves, but would never have gone into the caves itself because of their believe that their ancestors lived inside the caves. The caves offer two tipes of tours. Most people go on the Standars Tour that lasts an hour and takes you about 1 kilometer into the caves. The Adventure Tour will take you into some of the smaller passages that can be as low as 30 centimetres high.

The first two caverns are huge and on the tour visitors will see all kinds of rock formations. Only the first section of the caves are open to the public. Cango 2, 3 and 4 are only open to researchers as that part of the caves is still an untouched living cave. Although the formation in the public section of the caves is awesome, due to human interference it is very dead compared to the other sections.

The Cango Wildlife Ranch on the outskirts of town started out as a crocodile farm many years ago. In the last 10 years it has been turned into a centre where several endangered animal species are bred with while their tour and exhibits are designed to educate people about endangered species. The first section of the Ranch is called the Valley of the Anchients. It takes the form of a lost city with various animal displays, but don't think of it as a zoo. Part of this area is still dedicated to crocodiles. It is here that they offer something truely unique. Crocodile cage diving. For a fee you can don a wetsuit and hop in a cage, get lowered into the pool inbetween foer or five humangus crocs. It looks awesome and I still want to do it one day.

The also have a display where they show how one of the guides get a crocodile to jump out of the water and take a piece of meat from his hand. I wondered why some many of the guides there only have one arm. Just joking. The rest of the Ranch is dedicated to birds, wild dogs, pigmy hippos and of cause their Cat Sancuary where they breed with cheetah.

Anyway, this is it for our Garden Route tour. I hope you enjoyed the trip.

Ostrich Farms in Oudtshoorn district

Yesterday we got as far as Mossel Bay. From there to Cape Town you drive through the Overberg which is mainly farming country and not much else.

If you cross the Outeniqua Mountains from Mossel Bay (on the Robertson Pass) and George (on the Outeniqua Pass) you get to the Klein Karoo. Klein comes from Afrikaans and means little while Karoo comes from the Khoisan language and means "Place of thirst". The Klein Karoo and in particular the area around the town of Oudtshoorn has become a natural extension of the Garden Route. The Klein Karoo is vastly different from the Garden Route in that as you cross the mountain you are in a different world. The area's climate is dry and hot with the vegetation consisting mostly of Karoo shrub, grasses and low bush (oh yes, and also lots of stones).

The Klein Karoo is probably best known for its ostriches. There are many ostrich farms supplying both the local as well as the export market with ostrich meat. The meat is very healthy. Strangely ostrich meat is a red meat and has virtually no fat or cholesterol. This means that somebody with high cholesterol who can't eat red meat can still enjoy ostrich. Ostrich biltong (dried meat like American jerky, just better *hee hee*) is very popular here in South Africa while the feathers are exported for the use in costumes for festivals. Some day when I'm really bored I will do an post on ostriches and give you all the nitty gritty of ostriches.

Around Oudtshoorn some of the biggest tourism attractions are the ostrich show farms. You can't visit the area without going to one of the show farms. Here visitors are showed everything there is to be known about the ostrich. From breeding to their legs, feathers and heads and then what products you get from ostriches. Then its on to the camps where visitors can have the opportunity to stand on an ostrich egg, touch an ostrich, sit on one or (if you weigh less than 75kg) even ride one. At the end of the visit professional ostrich jockeys (how many people can put that on their CV's) will do an ostrich race for the visitors. Here Michael Schumacher on the right and Hopeless on the left is having it out for first place.

The Choo Tjoe to Mossel Bay

If i suddenly dissapear for a couple of posts, don't worry. I seem to be loosing bandwidth somewhere and have a feeling that somebody is tapping in from somewhere. I'm hoping the problem will be sorted out soon. Anyway, on with the tour.

One of the most popular tourist attractions on the Garden Route is the Outeniqua Choo Tjoe steam train. Its usual route between George and Knysna was damaged very badly a couple of years ago and its furure was very bleak. Some bright spark then suggested that they run the other way from George and end up in Mossel Bay about 50km away. The trip takes about two or so hours and passes through a very scenic area, over a couple of rivers and along the coastline.

Mossel Bay is situated exactly halfway between Port Elizabeth and Cape Town and is along with George the other big town on the Garden Route. The town is a very important commercial centre for the surrounding area. The name Mossel Bay came from some of the first European explorers to come into the bay. The found a cave near the point of the bay full of mussle shells and called it Mossel Bay. The modern thinking on the reasons for the shells was that they were part of a Khoisan midden (junk heap) in the cave.

Mossel Bay is situated inthe only fully north facing bay on the South African coastline. It has the second most temperate climate in the world after Hawaii (Port Elizabeth is apparently fourth on that list) and has some beautiful beaches. Now this is not to scare anybody off from swimming there, but the ocean outside the bay is also one of the best areas in South Africa (after Gans Bay and False Bay) to do cage diving to watch the Great White Sharks.

The thing that Mossel Bay is most famous for is the fact that this is the spot where Bartholomew Dias became the first (known) European explorer to set foot in SA in 1488. In 1988 a replica of his Caraval was built in Portugal for the 500th anniversary of the event and was sailed to Mossel Bay. The replica is the centre peace of the Diaz Museum complex on the beachfront.

George

The town of George is one of the two big (ok, biggish) towns in the Southern Cape. Established in the early 1800's, the town was the first to be founded in the then Cape Colony by the British and was named after King George III.

Along the main road through George you will find the NG Kerk Moedergemeente (Dutch Reformed Church's Mother Congregation of the Southern Cape). The building is one of George's historic landmarks.

Georges is located at the foot of the imposing Outeniqua Mountains. The word Outeniqua means "Men laden with honey" in the Khoisan language and refers to the old days when the local Khoisan tribes went into the mountains to fetch honey from the wild bees. There are four passes that cross the mountains. The original pass was called the Cradock pass and is now a hiking trail. The second pass, the Montagu Pass follows one of the valleys through the mountain and is a gravel road that is still accessible. The "new" pass is called the Outeniqua Pass and is a awesome pass that cross the mountain into the Klein Karoo (more on that area when we get to Oudtshoorn in a couple of days).

Outeniqua Railway Museum can be found at the George station and is a big shed with a varied collection of steam trains, historic carriages, historic station goodies and vintage cars. It is from here that the Outeniqua Choo Tjoe departs. That trip we will do tomorrow.

Also departing from the Railway Museum is the Outeniqua Power Van. These historic restored electric railway vans will take you on the fourth pass up the Outeniqua Mountains, the railway pass. They will take visitors up to the top of the pass to enjoy the magnificent scenery of the mountains with it surrounding forests and plantations and the town below.