Wartburg

     Wartburg is a tiny town that pretty much only exists because of sugar cane farms. In fact, our guide book didn't even feature it. We went there because we have some family there and it was my great-aunt's 80th birthday! Our family was super fun to get to know and we did all sorts of things. Our "cousins" (in South Africa if you know you're related to someone but it is too complicated to explain you just call them cousins) were friends with a couple of people who had their own little game farms and so they kindly took us on a tour!

We rode African style :)

     This tour ended up being the coolest exposure we have ever had to the wild beasties of South Africa (even after going to an actual game park later on). Because the animals were half tame we got to go super, super close to them and got to see a massive variety in a short amount of time (the happiness of this will be explained later).

We even got an epic giraffe picture!

  

And got super close to some rhinos

    Later on we also got a tour of a sugar factory and learned about how sugar is made from sugar cane. It was very interesting and I will never look at sugar the same way again. My mom's entire life was pretty much ruined and our hearts broken when we learned that brown sugar isn't healthier than white sugar. It is just a bit dirtier...that's pretty much the only difference nutritionally. However, I still think it tastes much better.
     While we were there we also got to see a sugar cane field burn. The farmers light their entire harvest on fire because it reduces the amount of manual labor to harvest it, and apparently returns some nutrients into the soil. I am pretty sure that this method of harvest is horrible for the environment, but that seems to be the easiest method...and it looks really cool!

        My great-aunt's birthday was great and we got to meet even more family which was lovely, because that was pretty much the main reason we went to South Africa was to get to know our family.

Yay cousins!