Chris Rowan is a geologist specialising in the dark arts of paleomagnetism, and getting people to pay him to travel to exotic destinations for fieldwork. Having drilled up New Zealand during his PhD, and South Africa in his first post-doc, he now works at the University of Edinburgh.Last week was my first visit to Cape Town, a place about which I had heard much, both before and after I moved to South Africa. A lot of this talk revolved about how different the Cape is from the rest of the country. I'll agree that, as a city, it did seem a bit more relaxed than Johannesburg; I certainly liked the fact that the city centre felt a bit more accessible. However, I can't really say I got that "more European" vibe that some had told me about. Still, there was one thing that made me feel a bit more at home: old rocks actually look old:
These pictures were taken as I wandered along the sea front between Three Anchor Bay and Seapoint, and show interbedded sandstones and shales of the Malmesbury Group. The age of these rocks is somewhat poorly constrained, but they're thought to be late Neoproterozoic to earliest Cambrian in age - somewhere between 500 and 700 million years old. And, because they are located away from the stable cratonic interior of southern Africa, they actually look old - they've been quite strongly folded, are fairly heavily jointed and fractured, and look fairly baked too. My geological instincts, honed back in the UK where 'Precambrian' is almost a synonym for fubarite, have always been somewhat dizzied by my many encounters in the past couple of years with rocks that have hung around for 2 or 3 billion years with nothing much happening to them. This seems much more comfortable, and familiar.
So, geologically at least, Cape Town does have a European vibe after all. More pictures to follow in the next couple of days.
Environment
Comments
I'm amazed that you've been there this long and only now to cape town!
Hey, rent a car and drive north to Augrabies now. If you have not been there, you must, as a geologist. You can't take gneiss rocks at Aubrabies for granite any longer.
Posted by: Greg Laden | November 3, 2008 4:51 PM
Those are young rocks.
Posted by: Lab Lemming | November 3, 2008 9:00 PM
Second Gregs suggestion, although I can't comment on the rocks directly. But Augrabies is beautiful.
Been up Table Mountain yet?
Posted by: Kenneth Oberlander | November 4, 2008 2:04 AM
I did swing through Augrabies earlier in the year, although I'd love to go back. That whole region is starkly beautiful.
Although it is a good 10-12 hour drive from Jo'burg, so not really a place I can visit on a whim!
Posted by: Chris Rowan | November 4, 2008 3:57 AM
I'm not a geologist, but I did live in Pretoria for a year. I miss those jacarandas ...
Pilanesberg is not too far away from Jo-burg. There's a wildlife preserve there inside a circular depression left by a long-dead volcano (if memory serves). On the way, you can check out the range west of Pretoria. You could do it in a long weekend, easy.
We never got that far south, but the mountains in and around Lesotho are supposed to be wonderful for climbing. I'd bet a geologist might find them fascinating, too.
I spent one of the best years of my life in the RSA, and I miss it still after eight years out. Enjoy!
Posted by: wheatdogg | November 6, 2008 12:52 AM
So beautiful and funny. It looks like island Maneron in Pacific ocean
Posted by: pliner | November 23, 2008 5:43 PM