My gunsteling Kunste ... er ... ding

Ons kan nou 'n lekker ... aw, heck, my Afrikaans is waaaay too crummy for all of this.

So I've just touched down in Cape Town after visiting Oudtshoorn for a few days. My expedition has been filled with art, giant chickens and Afrikaans. Loads of it.

Pic related. Sorta.

Oudtshoorn plays host to an annual arts festival known as the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees. As you may have guessed, it's very, very Afrikaans. And I'm very, very English. In fact, I'm the sort of guy who could walk the streets of London and get accosted by random locals who only want to tell me just how damn English I am. Yeah, it's that bad.

Some may be tempted to suggest that I'm exaggerating. Verily, I deny this with damning evidence: my interaction with just about every local in Oudtshoorn since I got there last Thursday is testament to the fact that I cannot utter a word to – nay, cannot even stand within six feet of – an Afrikaans-speaking individual without them immediately switching to English on my behalf.

Even Egg Hat Guy was on to me.

I tested this over and over while wandering around the festival's main market. Shopkeepers, stall owners and passers by all chatted in a flurry of Afrikaans until approximately 0.034 seconds after I'd entered the immediate vicinity, at which point a little switch would flip in their head and instruct them to address me in English. It didn't matter whether or not I even said anything. They just started talking in English. Was a gigantic “I'm useless with the Afrikaans language” sign taped to my back the whole day? I dunno. I was hanging about with actual British people most of the time (comes with the backpacking territory), and even THEY got greeted in Afrikaans. There is no justice.

Another inappropriate picture placement. Enjoy.

Language barriers aside: the KKNK is absolutely bloody terrific. Oudtshoorn is like the Afrikaans mirror city of Grahamstown: it's small and pretty much situated in the middle of nowhere, but it can throw a damn epic festival. On every street corner you'll find stuff for sale, music halls, art exhibitions and strange people wearing gigantic egg hats (see above). The festival organisers even set up a freaking funfair complete with rides and candyfloss. All of this combines to make Oudtshoorn seemingly spring to life overnight.

Before and after. Those rent-a-crowd guys are pretty damn efficient.

I'll scribble out another post soon to point out just a few personal highlights from the day or so I've been at this fest – to incorporate all of my experiences in this humble blog would be a bit of a mission, I'm afraid.

Giant chickens and giant holes in the ground

Oudtshoorn is famous for its giant chickens. Heck, the settlement's treatment of these birds borders on worship. Their names, images and products are featured on signposts, inside cornershops and are scattered around an endless number of tourist traps within the area

OH NO HELP PLEASE THEY'RE EVERYWHERE BLAAARGH.

These large and gracious birds are a major source of meat in the area. Biltong, sausages and even steaks are sold in the giant chicken variety. I actually gave in one evening and indulged in a nice ostrich steak supper – my second departure from instant noodles in these past two weeks.

Shortly after I took this picture, my wallet leaped up and stabbed me in the neck.

I also went to a local giant chicken farm where I went on a guided tour to explore the world of giant chickens. It was great: not only did I learn much about these massive birds, but I even got to ride one of them. Of course, I couldn't quite manage a piccie from the beast's back because I was a little too busy holding on for dear life at the time. So here's a picture of giant chicken eggs instead:

Easily the biggest chicken eggs I've ever seen.

Aside from giant chickens, Oudtshoorn is also quite well known for the Cango Caves. Ever since playing Spelunky a week or so back, I've been rather geekily inspired to do some cave exploration and had a pretty cool hour and a half on the Cango “Adventure Tour”.

There's some rather tight places. Great for posing, though.

These caves were formed about sixty billion million quadzillion years ago, and a bunch of chemical reactions mixed up with water droplets and a whole bunch of science stuff that I don't understand leads to some amazing sights and very pretty rock formations. Here's my favourite piccie from the experience (and possibly the only one which any reasonable human being could make out):

Bonus points for not being covered in graffiti.

So yeah, cool stuff. I'll be blogging a little about Oudtshoorn's arts festival after this, then I'll hop on a bus to Cape Town to meet up with some friends. Coke Zero Fest awaits.

Curse you, vile Internet

If 3G exists around here, it's sure as hell doing a good job of avoiding my phone at the moment.

Blogging has become rather heinously difficult at the moment. Timeouts, disconnections and killer crocodiles are making my online life a bit of an IT purgatory.

So I'm just going to write up some stuff in the background and post it all up when I hit Cape Town. You can relax for now ... though if I don't put something up by Monday, it probably means that I've been eaten by an ostrich or something. Nice knowing you.

Oudtshoorn (Part one of eleventy-six)

So, a day or so back I hopped onto the Baz Bus, radically changed my plans and took a shuttle to Oudtshoorn for a few days instead of going with my original George – Mossel Bay – Swellendam idea. Then I arrived in Oudtshoorn, realised that I'd stumbled in just before the annual Kunstefees (good luck, international readers) and decided to stay for a few days longer.

I'm currently residing at Backpacker's Paradise. It is damn awesome. Before now, my favourite residence was pretty much the Dijembe lodge in Storms River, but this place blows it right out of the water. With dynamite.

Well, dynamite and African charm.

Backpacker's Paradise really lives up to its namesake. This place is apparently ranked as one of the top ten in the country, but it's still a respectable R90 a night and offers pretty much everything you'd expect for twice the price. It has the typical game room, bar and lounge area, but also sports an itty-bitty swimming pool (though it may just be a really large jacuzzi), a nice garden and even its very own curio shop (I absolutely despise African curio shops, but it's a nice touch anyway).

Backpackers get discounts on just about every tourist attraction in Oudtshoorn. Doubly awesome because this Klein Karoo settlement has been by far the cheapest way for me to see sights and go on adventures. Instead of paying hundreds for a single shoddy expedition, I'm able to do a lot of genuinely interesting stuff for around R50 a pop. And if you successfully prove that a crocodile at the Wildlife park has chewed off one of your limbs, you could probably negotiate a complete refund too.

So, with all this awesomeness there absolutely must be a steep downturn when it comes to facilities, right? Wrong. Even the dorms have en-suite bathrooms and quite possibly the largest beds out of any backpacker establishment that I've stumbled upon so far.

No commentary here: just soak in the magnificent view.

These beds are pretty damn fantastic. They get 9.5 out of ten. Minus half a point because one of the blankets isn't quite to my liking – screw you, blanket.

Unfortunately, the massive popularity of this place combined with the looming Kunstefees spells doom for my hopes of staying in the dorm beyond a few precious hours this morning. I was only able to book a two-night stay (they're otherwise fully booked until April 11th) but using my resourcefulness, roguish charms and map-reading ability, I was able to secure myself a tent and sleeping bag from a nearby shop for a grand total of only R350. Now I'll be camping at the lodge for a few extra days at a considerably reduced rate – go me!

I sure hope that the tent gets a bit bigger once I've pitched it.

I'm looking towards my camping plan tonight with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. Mostly apprehension. In fact, I don't know how excitement even crawled in there. I seem to vaguely recall a total and all-consuming hatred for camping. But at least it'll be cheaper.

Living in Wilderness

Hokay, so today's blog post isn't much. This is due in part to the fact that I was feeling less than spectacular yesterday after combining a really late night, certain culinary indulgences and an early rise in the morning to finish off some work (including an article for my column on NAG online – oh look, purely accidental advertising, y'all!) that I'd originally meant to get out of the way before deciding that the time would be spent better choking on oysters.

Also, it's April Fool's Day. I cannot express just how much I hate the Internet, television and in fact just about any form of media over these next few hours.

I'm currently staying in Wilderness. Not the wilderness: just “Wilderness”. It's a little slice of coastal heaven situated between George and Knysna, and depending on your fancy, you can either stay by the beach or wander into the forest for two equally touristy experiences.

Given the way I was feeling yesterday, I honestly couldn't give a damn and headed for the Beach House lodge. It's not a bad place: the location is great, for a start.

“Fifty metres from the beach,” they said. “Straight down, of course.”

Unfortunately, this place serves as an example of the value of asking about prices before making sleeping plans. This was another of those R120 monsters which came equipped with several extras that I didn't particularly want or need (though the on-call masseuse would have been pretty kickass if I'd had the money for it). Granted, the beds were absolutely fantastic.

Humble at first glance, eh? Ahhh, the cunning ways of furniture!

These have to be by far the most comfortable sleeping devices I've encountered on my Garden Route trip. You get lots of snuggly clean blankets, the pillows are just plain awesome for some reason (I suspect they've been dipped in meth) and I slept very soundly. Granted, me feeling absolutely crap was probably a contributing factor to the enthusiasm with which I received the bunks, but the only drawback that I could really fathom was that they weren't, you know, king-sized. Of course, there IS the annoying little fact that they're equipped with some sort of experimental sonar facility: every time somebody walked near the bed, it would somehow resonate through the floor, go up the legs of the bed and transfer itself to the rumble pad that had been stealthily hidden in my mattress. So I guess that's 8.5 out of 10.

As a final note, the bathrooms are totally super-duper:

MIRRORS!

I probably spent more time in here trying (in vain) to snap cool photos than anywhere else. I'm a pretty weird tourist sometimes.

Also, http://nag.tidemedia.co.za/.