Oudtshroon

From Wilderness we headed north towards Oudtshroon, we decided to stop for a night on the way at a vineyard. We took the Montagu Pass, which was a slightly scary narrow cliff side gravel road. Luckily we didn’t meet many cars coming the other way, just a heard of baboons. This vineyard was a little different to the ones we had previously visited as it was up in the hills, additionally there was reasonably priced accommodation in converted labourer’s cottages. We settled into our cottage and headed to the tasting room. Here we were given seven different wines to try on a labelled mat which looked like some sort of wine chess.

After the tasting and a delicious cheese and meat platter we had a few glasses of our favourite, purchased a couple of bottles and headed back to our cottage. We both liked the Laatlammetjie wine which means “late lamb” in Afrikaans. This naturally sweet rose was actually made accidentally due to a lack of barrel space.

After a chilled evening we got up early to head to Cango Caves in Outdtshroon. Cango Caves is the largest show cave in South Africa, we chose to do the “insane adventure” tour which we were warned would involve crouching, crawling and confined spaces. Sounded good to us! The show cave was actually a lot more impressive than I thought it would be. There were two huge chambers with stunning stalactites, stalagmites and columns. The san people had been using the entrance of the cave for 1000s of years but would not go further than the daylight zone as they believed their ancestors resided deeper in the cave.

The first main chamber was discovered by a Dutch farmer in 1780, he was lowered on a rope into the chamber with just an oil lamp for light. The cave must look very different back then compared to us today with the artificial lighting, walkways and stairs.

We walked through the large bits of the cave for half an our before the adventurous part of our tour began. Here we had to do a few 100m of stooping before we entering a small chamber, the guide locked away everyone’s rucksacks as he said it was going to get tight! He was correct after climbing a steep metal ladder we negotiated the “Tunnel of Love” this was actually reasonably small (about my shoulder width). The lady behind me was a little unsure about this but after pointing out foot and hand holds she seemed to get along fine.

The next obstacle was the chimney, this combined small spaces with climbing, I could tell the lady behind me was getting increasingly nervous as the guide shoved tourist after tourist into a small hole and gave them twister like instructions. I said I would wait for her at the top, and again with a little persuasion and pushing she made it through, she remarked that this is not what she thought she would be doing in her sixties. The final obstacle was the letter box, this was a narrow slot with a slide (Olly did this head first) everyone made it through and we collected together before reversing the tunnel of love. This is the most actual caving we have ever done on a show cave tour!

Approximately 12 years ago a rather large lady went on the adventure tour, despite the guides advising against it she attempted to fit through the Tunnel of Love and got well and truly wedged. Unfortunately a group of tourists were in front of her and were trapped in the cave for 11 hours whilst the guides tried to remove her.

In the end some muscle relaxant injections and baby oil popped her out, after this incident plywood cut outs of the smaller cave sections are displayed in the reception to prevent a re-occurrence.

As well as caves Oudtshroon is famous as the worlds centre for ostrich farming. As we were there we thought we may as well have a look around one of the numerous farms. We did look into ostrich riding as I would be under the weight limit but in the end we decided that this was probably cruel.

Instead we stroked some ostriches, learnt that they have fingers, balanced on some eggs and got a neck massage (see photo below).