African Safari - 03/25, PT. 6
We got up around 7am today, and headed to town. Along the way, we stopped at the Van Stadens bridge, spanning the Van Stadens river. I got a photo taken, then we headed to Taxidermy Africa, in Humansdorp. Jeane Grieve was fantastic, and very personable. I spent a long time talking to him, telling him about the rifle I used to harvest my plains game and talking about how the hunts went. He then showed me around his work shop area, and I got to see all the various stages of taxidermy and how it was done. It felt like I was hosting on my very own Discovery Channel show. Jackie, the receptionist at the front, was also very kind, and was quick to provide us with coffee and a milk-tart pie of some kind. We spent a very long time at the taxidermist that morning, hanging out and chatting while we admired the mounts that were in the process of being finished. It was here that I chose the mounts for my own animals, and asked what would be most appropriate for each animal. In the end, Jeane was very helpful and offered some wonderful insights on what would work the best, and while, at the time of this writing, the mounts are still being processed, I am one hundred percent confident in the quality of work. As I told them, they are the artists, here is what I want, and everything else is open to create the most natural looking mounts.
After snagging a few souvenirs from the taxidermist, we moseyed on over to the gunshop in Humansdorp, and there were a handful of legitimately interesting firearms here that we don’t see often in the USA. One in particular was a bolt action .30-06 with iron sights in a synthetic stock, made by Zastava. This was referred to as being a perfect “bakkie” gun, or what we in the states would call a truck gun; simple, durable, and reliable, a utilitarian workhorse perfect for keeping behind the seat or in the gun rack of a farm truck. In fact, the term “bakkie” is in reference to the Afrikaans word “bak”, meaning container or bowl, and refers to the open cargo area in the back of a typical pickup truck. I spent a long time perusing the wares, and there were a couple items that almost came home with me (a pair of leather rifle slings with African game animals embossed into them), but by this point in the trip, I was running rather low on my budgeted money for the trip and had to leave them behind.
After the gunshop, we headed out to Jeffreys Bay, and walked through some of the shops there. It was a big surfing destination from what I was told, and it looked very similar to some of the coastal California towns I’ve been to. With the exception of the vehicles driving on the “wrong” side of the road, it reminded me very much of Carlsbad. We talked to an old couple that had originally been from the area, but had since moved to Germany and were back in South Africa on holiday. Interesting enough, the conversation went straight to hunting, and the old man regaled us with tales of his hunts in Europe, and new destinations were marked down on my list of places to hunt before I leave this world.
Once back to our little spot at Van Stadens, Christo treated us to lunch, which consisted of sandwiches built with tuna, margarine spread, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and cucumbers. Ordinarily, I would never put most of those things on a tuna sandwich, electing instead to keep it simple, but somehow this strange-to-me combination worked quite well. I don’t care much for tomatoes, and usually strongly dislike cucumbers, but these sandwiches were pretty damn good.
In the evening, around 5:45, Christo put ostrich on the braai, along with a few beef steaks, as we sat by the fire and drank beer and hung out. The whole time I had been there, every time someone mentioned ostrich, it was almost always followed up with how delicious and healthy it is, and I was not disappointed. The ostrich meat is seemingly very similar to duck, in that it is cooked similarly (cooked medium rare) and is even close in appearances, being a dark red color. After eating, we spend a bit of time in the surf doing a bit of night fishing. Only a handful of fish were caught, none of which were the species we were after in particular, but Christo insisted they’d be great if we cooked them up for breakfast. We ended the night around the fire, eating leftover meat from the braai and drinking beers, before finally calling it a night around midnight.
