We flew off from Singapore Changi Airport at 1.25am on 26 May (Sunday) local time and landed at Johannesburg at 6.10am local time after almost 11-hour long non-stop flight. After a stop-over of 1 hour, our plane took off again from Johannesburg at 7.10am and finally landed at Cape Town at 9.25am.
Immediately, our tour of South Africa began with the first destination: an ostrich farm.
Very much to our surprise, South Africa is very different from what we have perceived it to be liked. The landscape and the general terrains along the highways are almost identical to those seen in Australia. Weather was equally similar - that's expected since the latitudes of this country more or less fall within the middle of the Australia continent.
An olive tree in the farm
There is a tree with weaver bird nests in the farm. According to our local tour guide, male weaver birds make nest to attract female birds. A female weaver only decides to go into a particular nest if it finds it attractive. Otherwise, the female weaver would rip the nest apart so as to prevent the other female birds from "staying" in such unattractive nest. A very unusual bird species indeed!
Ostrich farming is an important economic activity of the country. African ostrich is huge - average weight of 110 Kg and a height of 2 m at least. As expected, our first meal in South Africa was ostrich meat!
African ostrich has 2 toes instead of 3 as found in some other ostrich species of smaller size.
Not many of our tour members opted to ride an ostrich but we did.
Every souvenir shop and all souvenir street peddlers sell ostrich egg shells either painted or crafted.
Each of us was given a painted ostrich egg shell by the South African tour company as souvenir.
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