Another lovely breakfast therefore with bacon, toast, mushrooms, garlic, red onion and tomatoes. Plus green tea and the rest of the juice. We both felt very fat.
I hadn't had a chance to take some photos of the camp shop the previous day, so I insisted once we had checked out that we drive down to the shops for some photos. SS stayed in the car, and I went in and surreptitiously got these images.
Looking at them now, I really want some Niknaks!!
Back on the road, and we headed back to George. Turned right, up over the pass, and on to Oudsthoorn. Traffic was quite bad, but we still made it to Pictures Guesthouse early - took about 3 hours. Luckily Wim and Margot were in, and happy for us to check in early. Our room was lovely and beautifully decorated. The airconditioning was also very welcome. So at just after midday we were happily lying on our bed in the guesthouse, drinking tea and deciding what to do with our afternoon.
We went down to the pool and lay in the sun for an hour or so (with me trying to swaddle my burns from the day before with cream, whilst not covering the non burnt bits).
It started to cloud over, so we decided to go to Cango Wildlife Ranch to see the cheetahs. We had some cheese and provita first to keep us going (and the rest of the Niknaks), then back into Sombrero, back through Oudtshoorn, and up to the Wildlife Ranch. There was the usual chancer in the carpark but we ignored him. Paid R95 each for entry, and we were forced to take a tour (ie a cross selling opportunity) of the main exhibits with a woman who had such a practised patter that she couldn't say anything outside the script. Let's call her Pollyanna. SS found her really annoying - I just tried to zone her out. We saw a few things, but I got more information from the boards next to the individual corralls really.
The fruit bats were a little... flagrant, very amusing. Kind of like upside down flashers really...
Then we headed over the crocodile exhibit - where you can pay to be dunked in the water inside a large cage with the crocodiles. Pollyanna helpfully went in the cage as part of the cross sell to let us know how much fun it was. The crocodiles could not have been less interested in what was going on, and the same for SS who looked incredibly bored.
Then the jumping jaws exhibit - very embarrassing! The crocodiles were obviously fed every 20 minutes or so and could not be less interested really. But after ringing the bell and banging for about 5 minutes, Pollyanna finally got a bite, and I got a photo,
and we all trundled off to the next exhibit. This was the cat exhibit, and we loved it. There were 7 cheetah cubs gambolling together that were about 4 months old,
and 3 white tiger cubs that they successfully bred there. Such huge paws!
Then we got to see the white lions, and the cheetah brothers.
It was lovely to see them, and Pollyanna got to go in their enclosures and play around with them (and then tell us afterwards that we too could pay to go in with them). Then we got to the end of the tour and she waited around in an obvious way for tips. Since we had not wanted to go on the tour at all, we certainly weren't tipping her for a 30 minute recitation, so we smiled and shuffled off to the cat encounter payment area.
We had a choice of going in the enclosure with the 7 cheetah cubs, or the 3 white tiger cubs, or the 2 two year old cheetahs. SS preferred the 2 year old cheetahs, so we paid our R150 each, and in we went.
This was the highlight of SS's whole trip. It was absolutely lovely, stroking them, feeling their coarse fur, and listening to them purr. Such lovely animals. As you can tell from the MANY photographs, we loved this.
We went back for a little walk, and then everything was shutting so we went back to the car through the very ordinary curio shop. We ignored the car guard in the parking place, and headed back to the B&B. On the way we stopped for cash and this was the one nasty encounter of the whole trip really. Despite SS trying his best, we got crowded at the ATM, and a "charming" man "offered to help me" to use the machine. I knew straight away what he was up to, so pressed cancel very quickly, said VERY loudly "thanks, all yours, I'll use another one", collected SS and headed back to the car. I was more angry than anything else at this point that they had dared to pick on me. Back at the B&B we got some alternate locations of ATMs from Wim, who helpfully told me that the guys had picked on us because we looked like tourists. So back out, in to Checkers, got the cash I needed for the meerkat man the next morning, and back to the B&B again.
SS made me a stiff G&T as I was still annoyed about the potential thieves earlier. I was hating Oudtshoorn at this point.
We drove out to Bella Cibo back in town for dinner. Perfect choice as it was a low key pizza sort of place. We had a chair outside on the balcony which was a bit chilly as the night came in. We had a Windhoek light each, I had the Pizza di Palma,
and SS a Pizza con Pollo,
and we shared the house salad which was HUGE but very delicious.
It all came to R184 including tip! Very nice friendly place, and I started hating Oudtshoorn a little less.
The weirdest thing was the two men eating at a table opposite us. Very amusing as I could not work out the relationship between them. One was an old fat grizzled South African man, and the other a young geeky Australian man. They were having a strange conversation about Australian politics vs South African, and the different economies. But why were they there together? Teacher and student? Weirdo and rent boy? Hard to tell really. They clearly didn't know each other well, but were not strangers. Hmmm.
Back to the B&B by 10pm, and settled in for an early night as we had to be up at 4:30am for our meerkat experience....
No comments:
Post a Comment