Caves as big as Cathedrals!

I am not sure if I have mentioned the difference in landscape on this side of the continent - yes, we had a backdrop of mountains on the 'other side' but they were mainly rocky and had lots of shrubs - completely different to the lush mountainside on this side of the Garden Route - huge trees, lots of forests as well as enormous mountains.

There is a difference in the architecture too - when we first got to South Africa we often commented on the fact that every house was different - they all had their own personality, and it was as if people could just build whatever they wanted, from converted shipping containers to castles in the air - on this side they are much more uniform, and there are more 'estates' as we have back home, with all of the houses built to the same plan - much less whimsical!

We went to Cango Caves today - actually the word cave does not really do them justice - one of them at least was as big as a cathedral. There used to be classical music concerts in the caves, but they had to stop them in the 1990s because the audience kept snapping bits of the stalactites off to take them home!

To get there we had to drive over two passes - Outeniqua pass and Swartberg Pass - both of them were really bendy, with LOTS of switchbacks - the kind of road that Top Gear would take a car on. At some points the speed limit was 120km - honestly, I thought even going 80km ph was too fast....talk about driving Miss Daisy - we were safe though, and to be fair, there was hardly any traffic on the passes - not like on the motorways which all seemed to be under construction and are all 40km speed limits.

We were on a sticky wicket as we tried to book in to see the caves. We had not booked a timeslot as it was at least a 2 hour drive from Knysna and we did not know which slot to book.... we got there and none of their card readers were working so everyone was struggling to pay - it was pandemonium.

Up we step and say 'two please, we can pay cash', and bought out tickets for the 1pm tour (it was 11.55) so we went for coffee thinking nothing more of it..... then we saw the size of the gaps you have to squeeze through and experienced sheer terror thinking we had booked the wrong tour....think of the time I almost got stuck at Forbidden Corner, only 10 times worse - if you know, you know, but if you don't I will tell you next time I am drunk, but it involved getting stuck because of the phone in my back pocket and 30 people in a line behind me standing in the dark waiting to get out of a tunnel...

Thankfully we had booked the easy walk (phew!) but we still managed to get very far into the caves, through lots of tunnels.

I finally learned how to remember which way a stalagmite and stalactite grow (for future reference, a stalactite holds 'tight' to the ceiling so it does not fall off, and a stalagmite grows up from below and 'might' reach the stalactite....

Hold on to your hats for some cave spam....

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/ccc3e4_ace81ee80e664d7eb30833c15087d43f/360p/mp4/file.mp4

Thank goodness we went for the Heritage Tour and not the Adventure Tour. Our guide did tell us about a lady who got stuck in a small gap, and she was trapped there for 11 hours! They had to pour liquid soap to try and get her free - it did not work and a rescue team had to come from the city, and they slathered her in liquid paraffin and both pushed her with big poles from one end and pulled her from the other end…

She had the whole group stuck behind her, including a diabetic and a child - she must have been mortified! (BTW we Google’s it to fact check it, and it was right!)

Now they make people demonstrate they can fit through the gaps.

We had a bit if an adventure on the way back from the caves - we decided to do a nice open air lagoon walk - first things first, we saw our first tortoise crossing the road! Thankfully it had already made it to the other side so I did not have to swerve (I would have to avoid it!). We were discussing how we have not seen any 'baboon' warnings, and although we have seen LOTS of people waving red flags - they have all been at the start and end of roadworks to warn people to slow down, not to warn of baboons. No sooner had we had that discussion than we got on the motorway and found a family of baboons playing by the roadside! No-one was paying them any heed, no one was warning us to slow down - honestly, it is like two different countries!

We finally got to the lagoon walk to find it was closed! There were signs saying it was dangerous and it was temporarily closed - now I am all for being a rebel, but if there is a sign in Africa saying something is dangerous, there are so many reasons why it could be so...so we changed plan and set off back to base - Emma needed a quick pit stop though, and there were no public loos to be found, so she sweetly asked the staff at the adventure park if she could use theirs - no problem, but when it came time to get back on the road, the sat nav took us a very odd way - we were on a dirt track and got to a bridge with railway tracks running across it, and a sign that said 'proceed when safe' the tracks went round a bend - how did we know if it was safe????? I just shut my eyes and went for it - well, I kept one eye open :)

Back on the road and I saw a field full of fluffy sheep grazing, until one of them lifted their head and I realised they were all ostriches! They must have been young as they were really fluffy.

Again we have seen lots of springbok all over the place, thankfully not on the roads.

We went to pay our bar bill tonight as we are leaving at 6.30 am tomorrow, and they told us they had settled the bill for us and everything was complementary! We still don't know why, but we are not complaining :)

Tomorrow we are on the the main event - I say main event, but we have done so many things already this trip - it feels like there have been many 'main events'. We are going to Kuzuko Lodge in Addo Elephant National Park for our 5 night safari. I am not sure what the WIFI situation will be like - but I will write a blog each night and publish when I can.

Actually I thank goodness for writing this blog - I could not remember what I had ordered for dinner 5 minutes after I had ordered it - If I didn't write this blog I would not remember half of our adventures - and we still have more to come :)