South Africa part 2

I learned a long time ago not to say “How are you doing?” as a greeting unless I really wanted to know. This piece of clairvoyance came when I got stuck listening to someone tell me her life story for 10 minutes and I really was not interested in what that person had to say. The reverse has happened to me fairly often to reinforce this point; people would ask: “How are you doing” and walk away as I am speaking. My greetings for politeness are more succinct now sticking to a “Hello”, “Hi”, “Hey”, “Sup” etc. In the South African Township the verbal greeting exchange assumes that the other person is going to say “Hello. How are you doing?” When I am introduced after I say “Hello” and they say “Hello. How are you doing? I am fine.” I smirk as I realize how much that social idiosyncrasy is an automated response to a question I never asked.  

Day 4 (Tuesday)
After landing in Cape Town the previous night we awaken to a heavy rainstorm. Our morning is spent socializing with the host family. I notice that there is a lock on the refrigerator and freezer. It is explained to me that these locks are standard issue because of the value of food to the poor population. That could be their food supply for the week and the many families would be devastated if this were stolen because they could not replace it until the next paycheck.  

We head out to Simon Town to see penguins that live in the ground. They live in shallow burrows in the grass near the ocean. I never knew that there were penguins that live underground. They are so docile and used to humans that they react to us as they would to an elephant. The penguins will let you get within inches of them and simply step out of your way to avoid being trampled, as they would with an elephant. They are not afraid of humans. 

We head to Cape Point at the Cape of Good Hope. This is the southernmost point of Africa. At the cape we find a brightly colored poisonous caterpillar and a dassie. The dassie looks like a cuddly rodent the size of a cat. I was told that they are supposed to be the closest relative an elephant. The rain starts back up as we leave.  

Day 5 (Wednesday)
We wake to find that our car was broken into during the night. We are instructed to go to the police station to file a report since the police would not come to the scene of the crime. The police do not bother to look at the car. They our police report is a 4 inch piece of paper that pretty much says that we said the car was broken into.  

So off to Hermanus where we arrive in slightly rainy weather. Even though the weather was not totally cooperating, the whales were. We could see them in the distance swimming at the surface and spouting. This is the first place we have to check into a backpacker’s hostel. The room bathroom is inside the room and smells like urine. That lovely odor permeates the room when the bathroom door is open. When we identified that the blankets were quite thin we learned from the cold night in JoBerg that we were going to need to buy an additional blanket for each of us. At least there are no strangers sharing the quad dorm room with us that night.  

Day 6 (Thursday)

The next morning the weather has cleared up and we walk the two blocks to the ocean for a final viewing of the whales before we head off to Oudtshroon.

We arrive at Oudtshroon at about 4 PM, just in time for the last ostrich tour. We pass by the first ostrich farm and head to the one further away. My host had been to the closer one and wanted to try the further one. The further one turns out to be 75-80% cheaper than the first site. We get a demonstration of making ostrich feather dusters, egg incubation. It is explained to us that ostriches are extremely stupid and have a 40-g brain, each eye is 60 g. The birds will swallow pretty much anything with the mouth and throat that are quite flexible. The ostrich exhibit showed the contents of a bird’s stomach to contain stones (for digestion), coins, sparkplug, toy car etc.  

Then drive over to the nesting sites. It is explained that the birds will kick humans. If the human stays still on the ground the bird can not kick him so it will sit on the humans for 4 days to suffocate/starve the invader. The guide uses a long branch from a thorn bush to ward off the ostrich. The bird does not want its eyes damaged by the 2-inch thorns. We are allowed to stand on the eggs because they are strong enough to withstand that much weight. There is a wooden A-frame built over the nest to keep the eggs out of view of flying predators. 

We get in our cars and drive 20 yards to the ostrich corral where we are allowed to ride the ostriches. That was the highlight of the trip. The retainers would chase the birds around while we were on the birds to make them run faster.