We ended up staying in Oudtshoorn for quite a while due to the fact that all our plans for the remainder of the trip fell through. We were originally planning to take a meerkat tour, head back to George, take a historic steam train to Knysna, eat some oysters on the lagoon, then bus up to Graaff-Reinet and onward to Joburg. The first thing to fall through was the meerkat tour, and for a ridiculous reason. Although the backpacker hostel advertises the tours, the meerkat man does not provide transportation. Apparently meerkat man is a bit anal. So while the guy at the hostel offered to drive us out in the morning, he could not drive us back. We offered to rent bikes, get a ride out, then bike back. This apparently was not good enough for meerkat man, who for no apparent reason dictated that we needed a motor vehicle there and back. The wonderful guy at the hostel even offered to let us borrow his truck. But driving a stick on the wrong side of the road didn't seem like a good idea, so we didn't go. Thanks a lot for being so understanding, meerkat man, I guess we'll take our money somewhere else.
The next thing we did was try to book hostels and trains for the rest of our journey. We quickly learned that the historic steam train no longer ran through Wilderness National Park from George to Knysna, but instead ran in the other direction, back the way we had come. This kind of defeated the purpose of going to both George and Knysna, thus effectively derailing (no pun intended) the entire idea. Our next blow came when we tried to reserve the Intercape (this was still 4 days ahead), and found out it was booked up for days. We therefore had to go to Joburg a day earlier than planned, giving us only one night in Graaf Reinet and a couple extra days in Oudtshoorn. So we had plenty of time to bum around here.
Luckily, there was quite a lot to do, the rain stopped, and we had a great hostel for relaxing.
Since there are so many ostriches around, ostrich products are very apparent at the grocery store. Erin got a kick out of the giant box of ostrich eggs beneath the chicken eggs in the store, and all the meat was labelled with stickers telling you what animal it came from. My favorite was the ostrich-neck steaks (a crosswise slice). I wanted to try them but Erin refused to eat neck steak.
In any case, during our four nights in Oudtshoorn, we managed to eat ostrich in several different ways:
Every morning, the hostel provided one ostrich egg for the entire hostel to use in their breakfast. It was more than enough. One ostrich egg is the equivalent of approximately two dozen chicken eggs. It fills a large bowl. Of course, we had scrambled eggs on several occasions. Taken by themselves, ostrich egg has a strange and slightly unpleasant taste, but if you add milk, meat, or vegetables, they taste just like chicken.
We also used the egg to make French toast, which was a little more creative. It tasted normal as well.
Opening one of these eggs is quite a challenge (especially if you want to keep it as a souvenir). They are 2-3 milimeters think, and therefore armour plated. We watched a group of boys in Stellenbosch hand-drill a hole using a kitchen knife, but it took a good 15 minutes. I used the blunt end of a knife-sharpener and a piece of wood to punch a hole in the top. Then we took turns to shake the egg out through the small hole. It took a while. Afterwards I pulled the inner membrane out as well. The egg filled a huge pan. In the end, the one egg provided egg for French toast, enough scrambled eggs for both of us, and quite a bit of leftovers. It was a fun experience.
Our last night, we splurged on an ostrich braai. Every male in South Africa likes to braai (it means grill). Similar to a barbeque, except much more common. We sat down to a huge dinner including ostrich steak, ostrich sausage, Greek salad, bread, and potato. It was delicious. I really liked the ostrich sausage, but the steak was good, too. It was tough, and had a buttery flavour.
Our last ostrich product came the final day, when we cooked up some ostrich burgers for the road (pretty good).
Ostrich meat is low fat and low cholesterol. Coming to your local grocery store soon.
~Travis
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