Obviously visitors are not allowed to take photos of the exhibits, but we spent a lot of time there, viewing and reading the information about each winner and runner ups, in the various sections.
"The exhibition offers an extraordinary insight into the beauty, drama and diversity of the natural world." (taken from Iziko web site)
We were particularly impressed with the under 10's section, but every section had it's own merits and inspired each of us to take better photos.
Then we moved to another exhibit called Virtual Earth, which is due to completed in July 2011. However there is an amazing 'taster' taking pride of place as visitors to the Natural History section reach the top of the grand staircase:
:
Again I copied this explanation from the Iziko web pages:
'Virtual Earth takes the form of a Gaiasphere, an interactive digital theatre housed in a large (3.2 m diameter) back-projected hemisphere with which animations of changes happening on the earth’s surface can be shown.
From a touch screen you select different views of our changing earth, such as the earth at night, ozone hole evolution, earth surface temperatures, earth core structure or interactive atmospheric predictions.'
...and a closer view of the touch screen
We experimented with various elements and then decided to have some fun! We rotated the Earth vertically so that it turned 'upside down'. It was such a bizarre view:
...and to put it in context, here is me standing next to the 'upside down world':
Of course, from space there is no such thing as an upside down world, and we discussed how diffferent the world looks from this perspective and how we get used to the stereotypical view of a flat map with America on the left and Australia on the right.
We particularly enjoyed the Tsunami 2005 section (which actually was incorrect as the Tsunami happened on December 26th 2004), which showed how the waves spread out from their source in the Indian Ocean, right around the globe:
This photo clearly shows the impact on South America. In January 2005 when we returned to Rio de Janeiro, after spending Christmas in UK, we noticed that the landmark rock, known locally as Recreio Rock, which had been attached to the shoreline by a narrow sandbank, was now an island. Friends explained that this was the result of the Tsunami waves washing away the sandbank, and over the next year we saw how the sandbank gradually reformed, making access onto the rock much easier.
It was another example of the bizarre or strange events, which force us to adjust our viewpoint of the world.
We found this view of the earth's surface temperatures very colourful, and again bizarrely are shown on the oceans not the land surfaces:
...and this is where we left it, for the next visitors.
We returned to the car to get our picnic and found a VERY tame squirrel waiting for us:
Then, the next day I decided to visit a 'basaar', which is a South African summer fete, which was held at a large Dutch Reformed Church, nearby. I had seen the notices on lamp posts earlier in the week. It was a late Friday afternoon event, for four hours. When I arrived it was packed with people milling around the various stalls and enjoying the hot sunshine.
It was 90% food stalls and groups of friends had met up, were chatting and enjoying different types of food. There were hot food stalls, like burgers and sausages, which they call 'patties' and 'woerst', pies with gravy, and pancakes, and then lots of cold foods, like wraps, salads, cakes, biscuits, rusks, and candies of various kinds. Inside the church hall there were stalls where homemade foods were sold, packaged up and then there were drinks (hot and cold) and icecream stalls.
There were lots of inflatable games for children, like bouncy castles, ball pools and one I hadn't seen before called bubble ball:
In another area they were a few stalls selling brik-a-brak, second hand books and toys, and fruit and vegetables. I wandered around this section and bought several items very cheaply (plastic containers for the fridge, some tall glasses, a couple of books and a bunch of grapes) spending R30 in total, less than £3.
I watched some children having their faces painted and then started wandering back through the crowd. A couple sitting on plastic chairs recognised me before I saw them, and I stopped to chat for a while, realizing how heavy my bag was becoming. They pulled up another chair and we continued to chat, as other friends of theirs joined them. They asked me if I'd seen the Pastors' Pizza stall, which I hadn't, so I decided to go and look.
The church leaders were wearing red chef's hats and aprons, and there was a highly organised conveyor belt of them putting ingredients onto already baked pizza bases and then into small pizza ovens to bake. I ended up buying one to have for my tea, and found it very tasty indeed, with a very generous topping of ham and pineapple:
As Andy's away, I shall take the remainder to share with some friends I am seeing for lunch tomorrow.
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