Tag: Cape Town

Blue Flag

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I might be on a nice little island with some lovely beaches, but are any of them Blue Flag Beaches?

Well, actually, no.

While Mauritius is making efforts to achieve Blue Flag status for its beaches, and some beaches have the potential for it, there are no universally recognized Blue Flag beaches listed in the search results for 2025.

Although the water here is stunningly blue and appears to be crystal clear.

Back home, however, Cape Town is full of Blue Flags:

Yep:

  • Bikini Beach
  • Camps Bay
  • Clifton 4th
  • Fish Hoek
  • Llandudno
  • Melkbosstrand
  • Muizenberg
  • Silwerstroomstrand

As ever though, (some of) the locals are accusing the city of “paying” for the titles (that’s not how it works), complaining that their local beach (not on the list) isn’t very clean, or quite simply inventing weird reasons why Cape Town shouldn’t have any Blue Flag Beaches.

Ah yes, the old “orange urine” thing.
And that “continuous” issue.

You might want to see a doctor, Johann.

But I don’t think there’s much danger of that sort of thing, really. Let’s say that 10,000 people each urinate 250ml into the ocean. That’s a total of 2,500 litres of wee. And that sounds a lot until you understand that the volume of the South Atlantic is 160,000,000,000,000,000,000 litres. (That’s 160 million km3).

I think that’s going to be pretty diluted.

I think we’re going to be ok.

As for me – I’m going to take my chances with the Indian Ocean outside my door.

Happy Swimming!

There is no diesel in Cape Town

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I don’t want to alarm anyone, but there is no diesel in Cape Town.

I went to a filling station earlier this afternoon and they didn’t have any diesel, and then I did some rudimentary extrapolation, and now apparently, there is no diesel anywhere in Cape Town.

That’s 1/1 or 100% of filling stations which did not have diesel.

And if you think that’s not quite comprehensive enough a study, then add to that the fact that every extrapolation that I have done today has proven that there is no diesel in Cape Town.

That’s 1/1 or 100% of the extrapolations that I have done which have proven that there is no diesel in Cape Town.

Worrying times.

CAPE TOWN: Don’t miss the eclipse tonight!

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There’s a total lunar eclipse visible over Cape Town (and much of South Africa) this evening, and it’s at a perfectly reasonable time to see, and then still get to bed ahead of your upcoming work week.

tl;dr (how lazy are you?!?)
Basically, to see it, you need to look at the moon (dur!) from 7:30pm.
And basically, the moon will be in the East.

A total lunar eclipse happens when the moon is in the shadow of the earth:

Here’s all the information you need for the timings of the various stages of the phenomenon from the Mother City:

Step 2 “, Rising, Moonrise, Rising” seems a bit repetitive, but I promise that I’ve checked and the timings are all accurate – and it could be spectacular. You don’t need any eye protection – it’s just moonlight – and it will be perfectly visible without any binoculars or similar (although take some along if you want to).

Last night would have been absolutely perfect, but it’s a bit cloudy and windy out today (I’m writing this at lunchtime). Still, as we know, weather stuff can and does change very quickly here, so it might all be ok, or it might be just rather frustrating. Remember that if it is the latter, you’re not alone…

So hold thumbs, cross fingers, pray to your given deity or just wrap up warmly, pop out at half seven and have a look.

Have fun out there! And please share this post so no-one misses out.

Barcelona closes two cruise ship terminals

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Obviously, they’ve been reading 6000 miles…, and have decided that action is required.

Ostensibly, this is – as you can see – a plan to fight the city’s overtourism problem. And we’ve heard a lot about the clashes between tourists and locals recently. Must be equally nice and awful to have that sort of problem. But I’m not sure that Barcelona needs the money quite as much as Cape Town does. So shutting down two of your seven!!!!! cruise terminals might be a viable option to cut tourist numbers to some degree.

But then look down at that last paragraph: green power supplied to cruise ships while they are berthed. And while that doesn’t remove the tourists (the two closing cruise terminals do that) or the visual distractions, it might at least reduce the amount of pollution that these ships add to the ports in which they are staying.

Perhaps, since Cape Town is seemingly (and reasonably) anxious to grow our local cruise ship business, we should be looking at providing a similar green energy policy and hook-ups for the cruise ships visiting the Mother City? We have wind, we have sunshine, and we could place something right down in the port area without the need for extensive infrastructure like power lines.
Given how much money the cruise ships bring into the city, surely some it invested in making them a greener way of accessing Cape Town – and protecting the health of the local population – would be no bad thing.

And when I say wet…

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It has been raining a lot. And it is still raining. And there’s more rain in the forecast.

But just how much has it been raining?

This much:

367.8mm in the last few days just down the road from us about an hour ago. And I’m only saying “about an hour ago” because it’s almost certainly more than that now.

The rain has only really been falling for the last 4 days, so we’re looking at almost 100mm a day. And our local ground really isn’t set up for that. Hence all the flooding.

We might have a couple of dry days (T&Cs apply) before the next wave(s) of rain head in.

Right now, I’m going to watch the mud-wrestling rugby from the stadium in town.