On the road again

The last day of that first week we did an Eco-tour with our guide Rudy. We drove up the mountain traversing the Swartberg pass at 5194 plus feet or 1583 meter and walked at the mountain conservation headquarters grounds learning about plants, herbs and flowers . (Built by 250 prisoners in about 7 years between 1881 and 1888) (Swartberg mountain reserve foundation headquarters and below the examples of local flora found along our walking trail - the tree stump shows that non indigenous plants and trees had been removed in order to restore the original ecological environment) The area now a Unesco heritage site seems to be the home of species not often found elsewhere. We visited also an olive oil farm, had lunch at a winery and ended the day with a visit to an Ostrich farm, where we stood on eggs to test the strength of the shell, the ladies were pictured sitting on an Ostrich, but declined to ride them. We watched the males courting the ladies and having occasionally a successful roma...

  Then it was onward to Oudshoorn, the world capital of Ostrich rearing. (Devey trying to keep us entertainment ained while his boys look for the meerkat colony) Early the next morning we came face to face with a meerkat colony, viewed by 15 or so paying visitors, led by a meerkat tour guide, Devey Glinister, who makes it his life career to find meerkat colonies and then condition them to the presence of people, by encroaching on them over many months to the distance that we now enjoyed. That morning was almost a bust as we were told that a new male had taken control of the family we were supposed to visit and this new male had taken the family to new housing somewhere in the many acres wide fields. His men were scouring for the meerkats and we were in the mean time promised that we owed him nothing if the meerkats were not found. (But here they are in their full glory, basking in the morning sun light) Luckily after an hour and a half wait the meerkats were found and we viewed th...