Home of the Cango Caves
LESS than an hour's drive from the coast is the town of Oudtshoorn, the "ostrich feather capital" of the world during Victorian and Edwardian times, and home to the Cango Caves - acknowledged as one of the most beautiful calcite caverns in the world.
Here, the visitor can be treated to an informative, interesting and really amusing visit to an ostrich farm, which includes a finale of the handlers competing in an ostrich race.
The area is home to many fine "Feather Palaces" constructed for the ostrich barons of yesteryear, when ostrich plumes fetched almost $200 per pound in the fashion centers of Paris and London.
North of the town are the Cango Caves - a series of numerous caverns and corridors, where fantastic formations and innumerable stalactites and stalagmites are revealed in sparkling brilliance.
For those travelers with a little extra time to spare, a drive through nearby Meiringspoort, a mountain pass hemmed in by gigantic precipices of volcanic strata and strewn with an abundance of wild flowers, gives one a glimpse of a truly beautiful corner of South Africa.
