29 Museum and art

Pictures
Route
1 Windhoek to Joburg
2 Views and gold
3 Kruger bound
4 Elephant and rhino
5 To Olifants
6 To Blyde River
7 Swaziland beckons
8 Ezulwini Valley
9 To Dundee
10 Zulu battlefields
11 To Hluhluwe
12 Hluhluwe & coast
13 to Winterton
14 Wits End
15 The Sphinx
16 Bus day north
17 Kimberley mine
18 Through the Karoo
19 Plettenberg Bay
20 Pootling about
21 Buffalo Bay
22 South of Africa
23 On to wine lands
24 On to Paarl
25 Wine and port
26 Cheetah and eagles
27 Paarl and Stellenbosch
28 Paarl to Cape Town
29 Museum and art
30 Robben Island
31 Cape of Good Hope
32 Around Cape Town
33 Table Mountain
34 Going home

South Africa

Cape Town

Wednesday 17 May 2006

"Stefan's Jewellery and Gems"

We both had slept really well in a very comfy bed with a really snug duvet that we wrapped around us all night. Hoping for a clear day we woke to clouds and rain, listening to the rain pouring off the metal roof and splattering into the pool below us. From our bedroom window we could see the clouds rolling in and shrouding the surrounding hills and the city. They would clear briefly giving you the tantalising feeling that a clear day would ensue but then a few minutes later everything would be white again.

Maryke came round in the morning to sort out our internet and DSTV connection. She was again very chatty and gave us local tips and hints about what to do and where to go. We spent the morning in our loft watching the rain, catching up on our diaries and generally deciding whether to wait for a dry spot or whether to just get out and get wet.

Curiosity got the better of us and we headed out a little after lunchtime getting suitably soaked in the process. The loft apartment is at the northern end of Adderley Street, just a few minutes walk from the parliament buildings and the beautiful company’s gardens. The gardens were built initially as allotments but they have since been turned into mini botanical gardens. Even in the rain they had a calming and tranquil air about them. In the middle stands a statue to Cecil John Rhodes.

At the northern end of the gardens are the national museum and art gallery. They are a far cry from the scale of their London counterparts but made for an interesting afternoon and had the added benefit that they kept us out of the rain. The museum mainly focussed on natural history, with a large collection of stuffed animals covering a wide variety of species found in Africa. If you don’t have time to make it to one of the game parks you can at least come here and still see the Big Five but somehow seeing displays like this makes me cold.

For the most part the museum was laid out in a very old fashioned manner. There were few information panels about the displays and the ones that were there were very factual and quite dull to read. The exception was an exhibition about sharks which looked new. Here they had taken the time to tell you about unusual species and/or to write the information in a way that captured your interest and imagination. My favourite was the cookie cutter shark, which latches on to your skin with its sucker like lips and then uses its teeth to cut away a chunk of meat. It doesn’t matter if you are human, a dolphin, whale or different type of shark the same technique is used.

They also explained about some of the “construction” features that make sharks so streamlined and effective in the water. Their skin isn’t just a blubbery layer which is what I had expected. It is made up of thousands of little plates, each of which is almost trident shaped and grooved with gulleys so that the water passes over it very efficiently. All very interesting stuff. In the main hall of the museum, which stretches up through all three floors, they have suspended the skeletons of a couple of whales, huge graceful animals.

The museum is well laid out and we started at the top and simply worked our way down following the ramps around the main hall. The ground floor was home to displays about the peoples within South Africa, focussing on their customs and traditions. It seemed like a good exhibition but by this time my ever shortening concentration span had reached saturation point and I wasn’t taking in any more information. If you go to the museum it is worth checking before hand what time they have shows in the Planetarium. You can’t go in on your own and we missed the start by half an hour.

Clearing up the market at the end of a soggy day

From the museum we cut across the square to the National Art Gallery, which proudly declared that its current feature was a Picasso exhibition. For me this was the perfect size for an art gallery. There was enough space so that you could have different exhibitions but it was compact enough that you reached saturation as you hit the last room of displays. What I did find surprising though was that it was mainly full of European old masters and only one room focussed on an African artist, Gerard Sekoto.

The Picasso exhibition focussed on how the painter had come to Africa, liked what he saw and integrated African themes and styles into his work. I have previously felt that shapes, forms and figures in Picasso’s work have just been abstract images. With a little imagination now I could see how the African influence had come to bear. Even so, I’m still left with the feeling that sometimes he was having a joke on the rest of us!

From the museum we ambled down into the centre of Cape Town to have a bit of a look around. By this stage it was about 5:00pm and we had expected to see streets bustling full of office workers on their way home after a hard day’s work. The streets though seemed eerily quiet and deserted and even though the shops were closing up there were few people to be seen. We popped into a smart little bar for a drink or two to ponder the weather, what we had seen of Cape Town so far and to plan out how we wanted to spend the rest of our time here. The chap in the bar explained that this is about as busy as it gets. Most people drive to work so at the end of the day they are straight into the car park and off out of town.

Our quiet and cosy little bar ended up being a little too cosy and rather than just stopping for one quick glass of Shiraz we ended up staying for another and another and (I think) another. By the time we left we were both very glad that we only had to toddle a couple of minutes to get back to where we were staying. The remains of our Fairview bread and wine served as dinner for the night and we were soon tucked up in bed again, watching the clouds obscuring the night sky.

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