7 posts tagged “cape town”

i have left cape town.  greetings from the airport in johannesburg, where i am waiting to board a plane that i will be sitting in for the next 18 hours - we fly via senegal, but i don't think we'll have time to get out and walk around.  i hear there is a tropical storm making its way up the east coast of the US, so i hope we can land tomorrow.

i'll post more when i get stateside.  wish me luck!

here are some shots from two oceans aquarium, which boasts one of two 'captive' living kelp forests in the world, some nice sharks and turtles, and the biggest morays i have ever seen. 

(31 may) yesterday afternoon i visited the castle of good hope, the oldest building in south africa and its military seat.  the castle is pentagonal and used to sit on the seashore (the dungeon floor was made of wet sand), until a large amount of land was 'reclaimed' and became the downtown area.  i had lunch (something interesting called 'waterbluitjie soup,' which as far as i can tell means soup made from water lilies - tasted a little like asparagus) and looked over my map to get my bearings, then wandered around a bit on my own before taking an official tour.  some of the highlights included the several-hundred-year-old graffiti on the cell doors, which have since been reversed on their hinges so you can see the carvings (made using nails pulled from the prisoners' boots); the reconstructed dolphin pool; and the museum collections of colonial furniture and black-and-white portaits of san people taken in the early 1900's.  oh, and the brass plaque outside - see below.  :)

(29 may) i realized that i have photographed and written about all the touristy things i've been doing, but not much about what i see the most of, which is the south african museum.  so here's a little about where i've been working.
 
the public museum encounter starts with a grandish ediface that fronts onto the company's gardens.  once inside, by continuing straight through the building, one arrives at the central atrium, which is hung with whale skeletons, and from which one can walk up to displays on three surrounding floors.  these include exhibits on rocks and minerals, south africa's geology, ancient rock art, sharks and other marine creatures, and a few requisite strange-looking taxidermied mammals.  plus some interesting skulls.  there are also many blank walls where exhibits have been taken down and not replaced; apparently the museum is suffering from a combination of renovation hassles, retiring staff and general shortages of funds, personnel and a unified plan for the future.  nevertheless, the displays that are up are informative and interesting.

by turning to the right inside the front door, one arrives at the planetarium, which is unfortunately suffering technical troubles (i found out today) and will most likely not be fixed before i leave.  :(

most of that is not what i see every day, though.  (in fact, today was the first time i looked through any of the upper galleries).  when i arrive in the morning i head straight in through one of the back entrances and up to the marine biology department, which is behind the scences.  here, too, the staff is dwindling - the collection manager tells me that when she started, there were seven working marine biologists and four technicians.  now there are two biologists and one technician.  the buildings have been undergoing various renovations for the past five years and apparently space is being reallocated, which contributes to the somewhat ghostly feel of the corridors.  still, they have the timeless feel of a natural history institution - faint smells of alcohol and other preservatives (mixed with wet paint at the moment), the almost inaudible hum of the ventilation, the office doors with far side cartoons relevant to the research interests of each inhabitant.
 
then there are the collections themselves.  i'm not sure what feelings shelves of preserved dead animals evoke in most people, but for me, there is something almost holy about the stacks.  they are a physical library of biological science.  standing amongst literally thousands of specimens, with thousands of scientific names, representing hundreds of years of cumulative taxonomic research, is infintely humbling.  in any sizeable collection, there are likely to be dozens of specimens that are new to science and haven't been described yet.  others are from well-known and well-represented species, but may have some previously unseen or unreported physical character.  some will change names several times.  nearly all, if the collections are properly maintained, will outlast the people who collected, fixed, preserved, and described them.

i recognize not many people want to spend their lives wandering through shelves of smallish corpses floating in a variety of semi-noxious chemicals.  but then, i wouldn't want to be a dentist or a banker, so i guess we all do what we love, however quirky.

it's been nearly a week since i had the chance to post, so the posts below will separately detail a few of the interesting things i've done in the meantime.  i have a few more days' worth of work at the museum this week, but will also be taking in a few more sights before i leave on saturday.

enjoy!

here are some more general around-cape-town photos, finally!