Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2010 Cango Caves and Oudtshoorn, South Africa

We drove north from Knysna into the beautiful mountains to visit Cango Caves.

Cango Caves are limestone caverns with amazing dripstone formations.  They include completed stalagmite/stalagtite completed columns and huge rooms where they used to hold concerts.  The entire place was amazing and only one-fourth of it is even open to tour.

We learned about how dripstone formations are made and viewed very large, thick completed columns.

The rooms were spectacular and the nice cool temperature and darkness was a nice break in our day.

Next we went to Oudtshoorn, which is known for it's ostrich farms.  We stopped at one and had a very interesting time.  First we learned about how big and hard their egg shells are.

The shells are so hard, you can even stand on them without damaging the shell.  Sarah volunteered to try it.

We got to see baby ostriches breaking out of their hard, thick shell.  These babies are in an incubator and will be placed with a "foster mom" ostrich in about a week

This little guy is 1-2 days old!  They are cute, but not as soft as other baby birds.

We then learned that males have the black body feathers with the white tail and wings, while the females are all brown.  After that we were given the opportunity to try to ride an ostrich.

Gabriel decided to try riding one and did a great job!  Craig and Alex Ross also rode.  I found it a bit sad because the beautiful feathers of the ostrich become broken and torn out from riding them and the bird just looks really scared... this wasn't my favorite part, but Gabriel was thrilled that he got to ride an ostrich!