(Publishing a day late from London. Three flights left!)
Today is our final day in South Africa. It's bittersweet because we are all ready to be home, but are not quite ready to leave this beautiful country. This has been such an incredible experience that has been made memorable by the fantastic people I am surrounded by.
We are heading to a crocodile farm. When we arrived we were able to taste crocodile, and it was pretty tasty!
Inyoni Estate is one of 60 croc farms that raises the reptiles. The farm is 15 years old and one of the smallest farms, and employs 12 workers.
This farm raises these crocs for the export of raw belly skin. The selection for slaughter is an intense management practice to maintain a grade 1 skin to clients.
To slaughter a croc they are first tranquilized before the brain is cut into an allowed to bleed out properly. Crocs must be fully dead, so they will kill in the morning and slaughter in the afternoon.
20 crocodile facts:
1. They are the only reptile with no tongue
2. Digestion takes two weeks
3. They can go 8 to 12 months without food
4. Hippos can kill crocodiles
5. They have eyes like telescopes for hunting
6. They stress without water
7. Males do most of the killing
8. Death rolls are used to take prey off balance
9. They eat (at the farm) six to eight chickens per week.
10. On a farm alpha males who are aggressive can affect females production of eggs, so at times problem males need to be removed
11. Crocs can live up to 120 years and will replace up to 6,000 teeth in a lifetime
12. Crocs are fast runners and swimmers, they can also jump their own length
13. They begin mating at 13
14. This farm has five females to one male
15. They mate/lay eggs once per year
16. Female chooses the male, and mate underwater
17. Females always nest in the same place
18. On the farm eggs are removed from the nest carefully, if you turn an egg it results in a deformed croc
19. Fertilized eggs form a white band around the egg
20. Croc babies live in a hot house for one year and are fed special diets beginning after three days
We had lunch at the croc farm, but croc was not on the menu.
After leaving the croc farm we took off on a cross country tour toward a large tourist trap/curio shop to blow the rest of our rand. We had ice cream!
It was back to the airport to prep for the long trip back to the states.
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