Monday
After less than an hour of sleep, we headed down to the lobby at 5am. To our surprise, two Africa safari buses were waiting for us outside.
We drove for6 hours, stopping in small towns for snacks and bathrooms along the way. Our final destination: CANGO CAVES. I've learned this week is supposed to be full of surprises as they told us we were supposed to be touring the caves and we ended up spelunking and army-crawling through rock tunnels no bigger than my head. Leaving the cave, I was convinced I wanted to become a professional spelunker, but as usual that dream changed as soon as we reached our next destination, which brings me to THE OSTRICH FARM.
Here I was inspired to become an ostrich jockey. At the farm we had the privilege to get acquainted with Betsy, the friendliest ostrich on the farm. Betsy posed for pictures with the girls and got a little more frisky with the boys. Our guide put ostrich pellets in each of the boys mouths and Betsy proceeded to pluck them out one by one, giving the allusion of a kiss. Adorable. We also met a dwarf ostrich named "pick me". Kind of sad but pickme didn't seem to notice or care about his dwarf size. Next, we went tot he jockey pen where ostriches had sack like saddles on their backs. He asked if anyone was brave enough to ride an ostrich and lucky for me, my hand shot up first. The jockeys caught the relatively temperamental ostrich, but as soon as they covered its head, it became extremely obedient. Then, they led it towards a tiny pen where I mounted it. Our guide pulled the blind fold off and the ostrich went crazy, running around with the jockey chasing it and me struggling to hang on. They pulled me off after a minute of riding and caught me. Definitely one of those experiences that you look back a few minutes later and ask yourself "Did I really just ride an ostrich?" We then got to look at some ostrich eggs. Our guide described that they are extremely durable and we could all stand on them without breaking them. So one of the biggest guys in our group, Harrison, takes a running start and jumps onto an Ostrich egg and it cracked. That was awkward. We left shortly after and took a long bus ride where I fell asleep.
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