After another lovely breakfast we finished our packing & vacated our room but left our car at La Pension.
We walked to the museum, across a pedestrian suspension bridge that swayed rather a lot just with the 2 of us on it, the museum was really good & detailed the history Oudtshoorn, which is a huge ostrich farming region. The museum had a reconstruction of a pharmacy, a clothing store & a bank & contained a number of sewing machines & other house hold items. There were a few histories of prominent people. A Jewish synagogue, some re-constructed rooms of people’s houses, wagons & buggies & even a few iron baths, well worth a visit.
We departed just before lunchtime & drove to Beaufort West to do some grocery shopping before entering The Karoo National Park.
The drive was initially past ostrich & olive farms before again entering a mountain range.
Our journey through the Swartberg pass was amazing, with the road being cut out of rocks, it felt at times like the road had disappeared & or there was insufficient “ head room “ to get through. I spotted what I think was a jackal standing high up on some rocks above the road.
We smelt a strong smell of paint & then encountered a small truck paining the yellow line along the edge of the road.
After the pass the road became really straight & flat for approximately 10kms with not much in the way of vegetation. We saw baboons at a picnic area, sitting on the tables with a couple going through the bins. Luckily we hadn’t planned to stop at that one!!
Richard seems really happy with our new invention of crunch, it’s when we have a cooked breakfast & then have something sweet with a cup of tea around 3pm in lieu of lunch. Today it was a Chelsea bun (Sunday it was carrot cake).
After shopping we arrived at the main gate & registered & were given directions to the cottages.
We had only just entered the park when we saw ostriches but I was too slow to take a photo, we also saw zebras.
Our cottage was in an area that was surrounded by electric fences meaning we could walk up to the restaurant & shop & their was also a couple of short walking tracks. Next to the reception we spotted a tortoise who was about the size of a corgi.
As we walked around to our door there were more ostriches but I didn’t have my telephoto lense on so again missed them (they can run so fast 70 kms per hour).
We ate in the restaurant, I had Karoo lamb which was really flavoursome & Richard had lambs kidneys which were also good.
As we left the restaurant we decided to see if the tortoise was still there only to be confronted by 3 Klip Springers, I did try to take a photo but it was very blurry, I’m not sure who was more shocked them or us!!!