April 18

We all got up early and I prepared scrambled eggs with biltong for breakfast. We were able to leave by 9:00 for the long trip to the caves that were well past Oudtshoorne. The experience was worth the drive. We did the standard tour which took us through five different chambers.

Our guide was outstanding. She told us the history of the caves, their discovery and the remarkable features in each room. These caves were cavernous. She showed us the stalagmites and stalactites and how they were formed. We learned about the formation created by the flow of water.. One of the caverns had such phenomenal accoustics that it had been used for symphony concerts until the 1920s. The practice was stopped because too many visitors were breaking off pieces of limestone as souvenirs. Samantha our guide illustrated the acoustics by singing an amazing rendition od Ave Maria. There were many stairs up and down to see the caverns but the rooms were all very spacious. The adventure tour requires health requirements and good conditioning.  There the passages are very small and you need to crawl through. Others are very narrow or consist of vertical climbs up a narrow wall. This tour is also much deeper. I can't imagine the adventure tour because the standard tour was incredibly awesome.

From there we drove to the Cango Game Reserve. This is a facility that rescues wild animals and takes part in conservation and breeding programs to help stem the disappearance of endangered species. The animals were all in natural settings and I was able to photograph bats, trumpeting birds, crocodiles, lemurs, a bush pig and wart hog, a Pygmy hippo, otters and a variety of different storks.

The highlight of the tour was a walk through the big cat enclosure. There were cheetahs, leopards, white lions (not albinos) and white Bengal tigers (also not albinos). Hopefully I can use these photographs to put together a bookk for the kids. Unfortunately, I didn't figure out that shooting the sign for the animal with its picture was the way to do it until half way through the tour.

After a light snack we headed back to Seweweekspoort and the unbelievable rock formations on the route. Shelley was sneezing all the way home and thought that she had an allergic reaction to her lemur experience. She wasn't interested in dinner and neither was Gila. I'm going to fix myself some leftover braai and turn in as well.
Tomorrow our destination is Knysna.