Grab your coffee and join Callan & Lily for a stroll along the quartzite cliffs of Hermanus, South Africa. Bedding, cross-bedding, joints, faults, veins, folded veins, and faulted veins all await you there in the morning light.
This is Dyer Island, off Gansbaai, southern South Africa, a little west of Cape Agulhas: Those are seals, a huge, crazy crowded colony of Cape fur seals. They are loud. They create a God-awful stink with all their fishy excrement. It was like being in a BBC nature program to see this firsthand. I could … Read more
My first view of Lion’s Head, the little butte northwest of Table Mountain, came through the fog on the morning that Evelyn and Jackie took Lily and I to Sea Point to see the migmatite: A lofty pinnacle – made of the same flat-lying quartz sandstone as the mesa of Table Mountain to the southeast: … Read more
Some tafoni (pattern of little weathering pits) expressed on Malmesbury Group (~700 Ma) turbidite sandstones at a little outcrop on the eastern shore of False Bay, South Africa: That last one seems to have some concentric layering to the tafoni pits – exfoliation? Spheroidal weathering? Hmm…
In December, Callan found an outcrop of Neoproterozoic-aged turbidites in South Africa, on the eastern shore of False Bay.
Callan visits the Sea Point migmatite, a contact between intrusive granite and older metasedimentary rocks, along the west coast of South Africa near Cape Town. His guide? None other than AGU Blogosphere blogger Evelyn Mervine of Georneys!
Weird plant from South Africa, in the north-central portion of Table Mountain National Park: it’s just two leaves! How bizarre is that? Two enormous leaves emerging from the leaf litter, nothing more. In Namibia, Welwitschia also have just two leaves, but they are much longer (and more prone to getting tattered). I’d love to learn … Read more
Spheroidal weathering in Kruger National Park, South Africa. This outcrop is Archean granite of the Kaapvaal Craton. It’s producing a nice little inselberg in the low veld; good klipspringer habitat. “Kopje” is the word I learned to call these things in East Africa, but I guess the proper Afrikaans spelling is “koppie.”
Got access to the wife’s photos from South Africa. Here are two other charismatic insects:
Callan and his wife journey to Africa’s southernmost point, and find a geological mystery there.
Here’s where to find it, if you want to. Can’t say I recommend it – just an overlook, with no opportunities to hike or swim or explore in any more detail than just passively observing gravity exert its pull on water unencumbered by underlying rock.
After our safari, Lily and I were taken up onto the Great Escarpment in northern South Africa. The escarpment is supported by sedimentary strata of the Transvaal Supergroup that overlie the Archean basement rock of the Kaapvaal Craton. The Transvaal strata are Paleoproterozoic in age, somewhere between 2.5 and 2.0 billion years old. They are … Read more
Here’s a look at what you see if you go to the Three Rondawels viewpoint above the Blyde River Nature Reserve in northern South Africa: A lovely scene. The three mega-hoodoos on the left are the eponymous “rondawels” (pronounced ron-da-vulz), which is the Afrikaans word for a round hut. These erosional remnants are more or … Read more
Here’s two nice examples of mudcracks I saw used as paving stones in South Africa:
Site of the mystery photo I posted over the weekend, the beach at Rooiels (“red grass” in Afrikaans), South Africa, is a lovely place… Located on the western side of False Bay a tad north of Cape Hangklip, Rooiels is somewhat famous in my mind because the Guru of Gigapan, Illah Nourbakhsh, spoke glowingly of … Read more
Yesterday, I showed you this picture and asked what you saw there: Today I’ll give you my impressions. This is an outcrop of sandstone of the Table Mountain Supergroup, seen on the beach in the idyllic village of Rooiels, on the eastern side of False Bay, north of Cape Hangklip, in South Africa.The field of … Read more
One day in South Africa, Lily and I walked across Noordhoek Beach… Along the way, I noticed these little squiggles of sand: folded tube shapes. I decided I should photograph a few to share with Tony Martin, since he’s into trace fossils along coastal areas. Anyone have any idea what made these diminutive sculptures of … Read more
The charming rock hyrax, a cuddly-looking fellow whose nearest living relative is the elephant: This is in the coastal town of Hermanus, a lovely place for whale-watching, in season. We were there at the wrong season, but the hyrax provided a mammal sighting that made us happy. The little fellow seemed to really be enjoying … Read more
At the Three Rondavels overlook in the northern Drakensburg Mountains of South Africa, I saw this chunk of quartzite with a peculiar variety of Liesegang banding (iron oxide staining of the rock by groundwater): A short distance away, I found another example: In one key way, I liked this second example better, even though the … Read more
African penguins (formerly “jackass penguins”) at Boulders Beach, Simon’s Town, South Africa: