Wednesday 6 October 2010

Day 6. Cape Town

Our last day in Capetown dawned fine and warm. After spending time getting our bags packed, we headed back to our favourite breakfast cafe (the boys ‘persistent request’..), Buzz. The boys loved the smoothies they have on the menu – who could go past ‘Milo Monkey’ or ‘Mango Mojo’ – the boys selections. Breakfast was a treat....delicious bacon and eggs, and omlettes, french toast...all sorts of yummy things!
Following breakfast, we headed down to the Two Oceans Aquarium. The aquarium was brilliantly laid out and the underlying conservation messages were presented in a really clear and responsible way.

The boys loved the microscope station – they were able to have a look at a whole lot of different seas creatures like corals, anemones, crabs and plankton. The staff members running the station really engaged the kids and they had a great time.



We saw the feeding of the penguins, which live inside and spend the day outside. The keeper leads them down each morning and leads them back up at night. We saw the Jackass Penguins that we had seen at Betty’s Bay, as well as some penguins from Antarctica.


We were fortunate to be there during the twice weekly feeding of the big fish tank. As the diver hand-fed all the fish, another staff member provided interesting and informative commentary.
The conservation messages encouraged us to consider what fish we were being served or buying, and that SASSI
have a green/yellow/red traffic light system relating to how endangered the fish are. The boys picked up small reference cards – great for them to get the message, but from then on Cameron would ask “What is the fish of the day” in every restaurant – even when he had no intention of ordering fish, and he would check his card.  He waould also check the menu to make sure there were no red fish on the menu! All the food for the fish is supplied from the local I&J factory and processing plant.



 We loved these 2 small frogs snuggled up in this flower

We moved onto the shark tank – Cameron noticed that all the sharks were female. He found the commentator from the fish feeding session and asked him about it. The staff member was a bit shocked that a 10 year old had sexed his shark population, then told him that they had problems with some of the males, so they now only have females. (Barcelona Aquarium is responsible for Cameron's knowledge of shark genetalia)


We had lunch in the cafe, Fish and Chips, of course! We can tell you that the fish they sell in the Fish and Chips is on the Green list, checked by Cameron) and then headed back up to the apartment, to check out of the apartment, and get our transfer to the airport for our Johannesburg flight.

When we arrived in Johannesburg, we transferred to our hotel near the airport and settled in for the evening.

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