India woke up early with the boys and joined them for the early morning bird hunt, while I continued sleeping for another half an hour. We all went for breakfast quite early and had packed and checked out sometime around nine thirty.
We started heading back home. We drove an hour or so towards north, inland, to the ostrich country. Hille was keen to buy some painted ostrich eggs and I was keen to ride one of those grand birds. India wanted to ride one, too, but thought that her doll would be too afraid to do something that daring.
There are several tourist-oriented ostrich farms in the Oudtshoorn area. We chose one according to a guide book and a brochure we'd seen, but I don't think the farms are that different. An ostrich is an ostrich, after all.
We went to a farm called Highgate, and were happy with what they offered. We were given another good tour, this time introducing us to the ostrich industry. Later, we saw ostriches of different ages and went to see some couples nesting their eggs. We even got a chance to stand on ostrich eggs(!) Not something you'd nescessarily put on a 100-things-you-shoud-do-before-you-die list, but India thought it was one of the higlights of the day.
We then went to an arena of some sort, where they had ostriches running around. One of them was tied to the plucking device, so he couldn't move (he seemed quite relaxed). Our tour guide must have noticed how brave India was, as he just picked her up and sat her on the ostrich! We all cheered and she looked proud :) After India had a go, everyone else got to sit on an ostrich, too. Many thought it looked too scary and refused. We then got to ride the birds. I had a go, and I can tell you it was great fun. I was on the verge of falling down the whole time, but with the help of the ostrich keepers I managed to hang on. I can recommend ostrich-riding to anyone who's under 75 kg. It's fun and it's cheap (the tour was R44, £4.4, and it included the ride. The elephant tour was R195, £19.5, but a short ride would have been R300, £30 extra). Heikki then asked the men if they could take India for a ride. She sat on an ostrich with one of the men and had a good run around. We all cheered her on. She was such a brave little rider.
Seija had organised for us all to meet a Finnish lady, Tiina, who's lived in the area since before Christmas. We met her at a zoo in Oudtshoorn. We had some lunch and wondered around the zoo looking at the animals. The boys were impressed by the crocodilians and the big cats. India demanded we should let her go and pet the cheetas and the tigers, and started crying when we said we can't. In the end, we had to take her away from the cats, the temptation. We let her touch the rabbits and the guinea pigs, instead.
We should have left the zoo a bit earlier, as we had to drive an hour after sunset. Everything went OK, though, and we got into no trouble in the dark. We reached Montague at half past seven and after some searching we found a place to stay for the night.
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