this is south africa

Boomslanging

Posted on July 28, 2014July 28, 2014

All is going well Chez 6000. Mrs 6000 may be overseas, but we are perfectly capable of looking after ourselves and while she’s living the grand life, we’re going to have some fun too. This was going to be achieved by going on a trip to Kirstenbosch and having a go on the new treetop canopy walk – the Boomslang – until the older half of the children got invited out to the cinema.
Then, of course, the younger half of the children wanted to go to the cinema too. That was until it was pointed out to her that she could be the first of the family to go on the Boomslang. The younger half of the children is six and when you are six, being the first to do something is a Big Thing. The cinema was soon forgotten and suddenly every second word was Boomslang. I’ll be honest here, the pronunciation may have been a little iffy on each of those occasions.

Heading in to the bottom gate at Kirstenbosch leaves you quite a climb up to the walkway – you have to traverse the concert lawn, which is much emptier, but somehow also much steeper when there aren’t thousands of people sitting on it. And then, tucked away at the right hand side of the path, there it was: a rather unassuming entry onto the Boomslang.

First on. (Not sure what the guy in the background is doing)

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d heard mixed reports from “spectacular” to “underwhelming”, so I guess I went in with an open mind. I was quite impressed though. It wasn’t too busy and while the views weren’t as good as they could have been (because of the weather), the way that the gardens open out beneath you is quite something. The name (meaning tree snake in Afrikaans for our forrun readership) is apt, as it does wind through the canopy like its namesake. It also moves. Quite a lot. Not up and down, but side to side. It’s difficult to say how much, but I’d guess at a few inches at most. Still, it’s an interesting sensation.

And, because I’ve already been asked twice, did we feel safe? Yes, completely. You’d have to work very hard (and be very foolish) to fall off it.

So, would I go to Kirstenbosch just to go on the Boomslang? No, I wouldn’t. As a standalone attraction, it’s just not “wow” enough to go just for that.
But it’s something I’m sure that I’ll do each time I visit and I think it’s a great addition to the gardens.

Some few photos here, tacked onto the end of the Aquarium tour we did on Saturday.

Aquarium Tour

Posted on July 26, 2014July 28, 2014

With the cat away (the cat is mostly in Budapest this week), the mice will head down to the Two Oceans Aquarium and learn about the progress of their new exhibit, before going on an excellent behind the scenes tour.

For a start, the passion of the staff is clearly evident. From the friendly greeting, through to the knowledgeable and infectious enthusiasm of Mike de Maine, the Technical Manager, everyone was keen to educate the visitors and answer any queries. Breakfast was served, my kids ate about seventy-four croissants each and we looked at technical plans and 3D renderings of the new section of the aquarium. Mike – who is project managing the work – showed us photos of the new build and shared some of the difficulties that they have experienced: from the unusually varied rock structure underneath the site through to the metalworkers’ strike, which is threatening to push the opening of the new tank back. We were given some startling numbers about cost, concrete and steelwork (I’ll have to look these up, but suffice to say that they were all very big). Also big are the stats on the new tank, from the huge, single-piece 350mm thick acrylic windows to the 10m long tunnel.

And then curator Michael Farquhar gave us a quick run down of the complex operation coming up when they will have to transfer the fish from the current tank to the new one and the challenges that they face in doing it. One of things I didn’t realise is that the old tanks (the Kelp Tank and the Predator Exhibit) are leaking and need repairs. There will need to be some shifting around of stock in order for these repairs to be done – all while the aquarium remains open and the public enjoy their visit.
Tough ask.

Finally, we headed backstage and had a look at the surprisingly shabby roof areas, including the top of the predator and kelp tanks – complete with penguins chilling out on the roof. Sadly, the light wasn’t great and my camera has gone to Hungary with the cat, so please excuse the photos.

This is the top of the I&J Predator Exhibit:

And part of the filter room, “something” in the lab and a kitchen shopping list.

You can see some more of my photos here, and some of Mike’s from the building site here.

All in all, a pretty cool and educational couple of hours, and if you are members at the aquarium (and if you’re in Cape Town and you have kids, you really should be) then get yourself along to the next members breakfast – really interesting stuff, nice people and a great way to spend a Saturday morning.

Wery Welcome Winter Weather

Posted on July 17, 2014

I’m probably the only one thinking it. I’m probably the only one spelling Very with a W too, but that’s another story. Yes, Cape Town’s wet and windy weather this morning came as a pleasant interlude to the bright, winter sunshine for me, mainly because I’ve lost my sunglasses.

Yes. Exactly. It’s because we’re only just past the winter equinox here that the sun is currently only getting to a maximum of about 35º above the horizon. And that’s at (today, anyway) 12:52pm. At 8am, the time when I like to set off for work during the school holidays, it’s about 11º up, which is about the same as saying RIGHT THROUGH YOUR WINDSCREEN AND IN YOUR FACE!

Talking about the sun, Cape Town moves back into having a sunset after 6pm as from the next Tuesday, 22nd July. This definitely makes for easier post work sundowners on Camps Bay beach. And in case you’re thinking that sundowners on Camps Bay beach can’t actually be done in July, you’re wrong, as I proved at 17:46:29 on the 11th of July, last year:

I’m pretty sure that sunglasses were used on that occasion.

Kelp Help

Posted on July 11, 2014July 11, 2014

The weather this Friday is so different to the weather last Friday. I even have high hopes of seeing Saturday, which is not how I felt this time last week. Of course, I did get to see last Saturday, but it was only because of the building skills of the local builders, who built the walls and the corrugating skills of the local corrugators, who did the steel roof.

So, survive we did, and then when we braved the icy temperatures outside, some of us kept warm by dragging kelp along the beach:

Wet kelp is heavier than it looks (and it looks pretty heavy). A few hundred metres dragging wet kelp along sand in the wind is equivalent to doing an Ironman.

If you’re very-nearly-almost-six-years-old, anyway.

Pretty Fly

Posted on July 10, 2014July 10, 2014

This just in from our Agriculture correspondent:
Great news for the Western Cape agricultural sector. We farm sheeps, cows, pigs and the like. We have pretty canola fields. Grain, lots of grain: it makes our beer. We do grapes really, really well.
And now, we’re about to do flies. Common houseflies, black soldier flies and blowflies.
We’re about to have [clarkson] the biggest fly farm – in the world! [/clarkson]

8,500,000,000 of the little buggers.

That’s a lot of flies.

The 8 500 square-metre undercover facility, being built by Gibraltar-based AgriProtein, is due to be completed next year and aims to produce 23.5 metric tonnes of insect-based protein meal and oils and 50 tonnes of fertiliser a day. Fish and chicken farmers have already signed contracts to buy the feed, an alternative to soy and fishmeal, according to Jason Drew, the company’s co-founder.

That 23.5 tonnes of “insect-based protein meal” is a long-winded and fancy way of saying “maggots”. Can you imagine 23.5 tonnes of maggots? Each day? That’s almost 9,000 tonnes of maggots every year. From this one facility alone.
Fear Factor eat your heart out (but not like this).

It might not sound like the nicest thing in the world, because 8.5 billion flies eating rotting food, manure and abattoir waste isn’t the nicest thing in the world UNLESS YOU’RE A FLY AND IF SO, HOW THE HELL ARE YOU READING THIS?, but the science is good, it’s ecologically sound and it makes commercial sense.

My only concern is that the insects will be:

housed in giant cages

Presumably, they’ve considered the size of their livestock and calculated the space between the bars of the cages accordingly, right?