Oudtshoorn can be reached by 11 mountain passes including the spectacular 24 km gravel Swartberg mountain pass.
Riding an ostrich is one of the highlights of the ostrich show farm experience. If you don´t trust the ostrich `staff´, observe a derby from terra firma. Curios and restaurants complete the picture. Tobacco, wheat, fruit, lucerns, onion seed and grape farming also occur in the region.

Marvel in the CP Nel Museum´s green-domed sandstone façade. Here you can learn about ostrich farming, as well as the history of Klein Karoo inhabitants and the Jewish community´s role in the feather industry. The Dorpshuis Museum focuses on the ostrich feather era. A highlight of the Cango Wildlife Ranch is the opportunity to interact with a trained cheetah. The Cango Caves´ chambers and passages feature dissolved minerals that have crystallized to form stalactites, stalagmites and dripstone formations that resemble fluted columns and drapes.

Enjoy "Meerkat Magic" with the only Meerkat speaking human-Grant McIlrath.

The senses soar as you can experience the most incredible canyon drive through encounters in the world. The Meirings & Seweweeks Poorts.

Established in 1847, Oudtshoorn responded increasingly to the demand for the Victorian and Edwardian trend of donning ostrich feathers.
The boom years spanned the era from the 1880s until 1914. The town soon sported sandstone mansions housing the `ostrich barons.´ But World War I and changes in fashion resulted in the industry´s decline-many farmers went bankrupt. Ostrich farming recovered in the 1940s with the establishment of the tanning industry.

Today ostrich products include eggs and leather, meat and bonemeal. Feather hats may have gone out of fashion, but those in the know still flock to Oudtshoorn at the end of march each year for the fashionable Klein Karoo National Arts Festival. 901 Productions of the best of alternative Afrikaans drama, cabaret, poetry, and music takes place here on an annual basis. Street life rules, with donkey carts ferrying about outrageously dressed Festival-goers. Before you know it, a town-wide celebration erupts!