Feather duster sellers with their colourful ware in front of the CP Nel MuseumI have said so before I will say so again. I love small town museums. They are never pretencions and tells it as it is. If you want to know more about a town and its history, just look for it's museum and go and loose yourself in it. The CP Nel Museum in Oudtshoorn is one of these where one can go and be transported back…
As our round trip day outing via the Swartberg Pass to Prince Albert and back through Meiringspoort was coming to an end, we made a quick stop in the town of De Rust. Named such as it was a place to outspan the oxen to rest before or after a journey through Meiringspoort, the town is quaint place with a couple of interesting shops and eateries along its main drag. As we were coming into town I noticed a donkey…
A farm house on one of the ostrich farms just outside Oudtshoorn on the road to Schoemanshoek. The mountain in the background is the Swartberg where the Swartberg Pass (read here and here) can be found.
There is an Afrikaans song that says "Oudtshoorn is 'n groot voël paradys..." (translates to Oudtshoorn is a big bird paradise). And that is so true. Oudtshoorn is called the ostrich capital of the world as 95% of the world's captive ostriches are found around the town. In the early days ostriches were farmed purely for their feathers, but today every single piece of the bird gets used. They are farmed primarily for their skin which produces the world's second…
We spent the first week of our holiday in the Oudtshoorn area. Oudtshoorn is situated in the Klein Karoo and its economy is basically split between farming and tourism. The word Klein means small or little in Afrikaans (also in Dutch) and Karoo is a Khoisan word that means Place of Thirst.The Klein Karoo is flanked by the magnificent Outeniqua (the word means Men laiden with honey in the Khoisan language) Mountains to the south and the majestic Swartberg (Black…
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…
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…