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Rocklands Rest Day

Posted on 19. Aug, 2009 by B3 in News

Our rest days had been relaxing but fairly void of any sort of African culture, unfortunately. Looking to do something a little more adventurous we headed out towards the ocean, Lambert’s Bay and a game park. It was nice to get out and do something besides climbing. Anyways, this game park was somewhere between a zoo, a sanctuary, and an animal rescue. It sounded interesting enough.

We drove back on a dirt road for almost 30 minutes. There were no other houses around. Finally we came to a gate. It felt like Jurassic Park and the necessary jokes were made. We drove up to a small house and poked around for a bit in a small room with old animal heads adorning the wall

Soon enough our “guide” came out and walked us over to two cheetahs in a huge pen. Several of the workers came out and they carried with them a rotten piece of flesh. This got the cheetah very agitated. The hair on the back of their necks stood tall, and the whined, snapped and pounced at the workers. It was a powerful and impressive display.

This oddly bordered on harassment, but it was interesting nonetheless. It made for some really nice pictures. There were lions there as well and we got quite close.

These pictures were taken through the fence.

After our visit with the lions, we drove into the cheetah pen, with nothing between us and the cats but fear. There the guide fed the animals.
We continued the tour in the back of the truck, safari style, and our guide drove us around his enormous property. We saw all kinds of animals, including wildebeast, eland and springbok. It was a perfect evening.

It was hard to ignore the bouldering potential on his property, and Chuck later discussed staying there for a while to develop the boulders.

Afterwords we had one of the best dining experiences of my life at Muisbosskerm I encourage you to look through their site, but this is a gorgeous, open air restaurant. We had a four course meal of fresh seafood, squash, venison, hot bread etc etc. It was really a great way to finish the day, with awesome food on the ocean.

They cooked over a huge pit of coals. I highly recommend a visit, if you are in South Africa. Reservations are required, and well worth it. This was the most expensive dinner of the trip, and alcohol included it was $30. Afterwords we walked down to the ocean. There were almost no lights and again the Milky Way was as bright as I had seen.