Hato Caves, Ostrich Farm and Tik Tok

Yesterday was a busy but very fun day. We started off by going to the Ostrich Farm. Unfortunately, all the tours were booked until noon so we decided to head to Hato Caves in the meantime. Kezia put on her music and we were singing the entire way there.

The caves were really cool and the guide explained to us the history of it: the slaves found them and would hide out in them to escape working. But, there wasn't any fresh water so they would have to sneak back to the plantations and steal it. We saw some bats and the lighting of the cave was nice. Afterward, we walked a leisurely trail.

Next, we stopped for lunch at a Lebanese restaurant called the Green House. They had never had it before I thought they would like the food. Almost everyone ordered shoarmas and I ordered some hummus and pita bread for the table. Even Dad, who ordered a hamburger, tried out the other food and liked it.

Then we went back to the Ostrich Farm, but got there an hour earlier than our tour was supposed to leave so we sat on the picnic benches and chilled out. I personally took a sweet nap.

The tour was really good. It was almost a language lesson in Dutch though hahah because he would say everything in Dutch and when he was completely done, he would repeat it in English with the same jokes. Pretty cool. We all had the opportunity to feed them and Dad, Sophia and I did that and we all could stand on an egg and hold it as well. Somehow Sophia ended up doing a pirouette on the egg which was really funny.

Some of the facts I picked up from the tour:

• Ostriches drink 5 gallons of water a day.
• They can run 50 mph and their main predators are the cheetah and the leopard. When the ostrich starts running from a predator it usually doesn't stop for an hour.
• They don't have teeth.
• To defend themselves, they kick and they can kick really hard.
• They are full grown by 1 year and start reproducing by 2 years old.
• They live for about 80 years in the wild.

The farm is also very ecological and ostriches remains are fed to the crocs they have on the farm. The bones are dried in the sun and then painted by an artist to sell to people. To see the crocs, the guide threw marshmallows on the water and they came up to eat them. One went really close to a turtle but the guide told us that his shell was too hard for the crocs to eat.

Finally, we went home and made a short video to Kesha's Tik Tok. Haha, it was pretty fun.