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Hoerikwaggo Trail 1: the hike
A little over a year ago, Lily and I hiked the Hoerikwaggo Trail, an overnight trek from Cape Point to Cape Town, South Africa. In case you’re wondering, it’s pronounced “Hore-wreckh-uh-vahkh-oh.” It’s...
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Hoerikwaggo Trail 2: the Table Mountain Sandstone
Yesterday I introduced you to the Hoerikwaggo Trail. Today, we’ll start looking in detail at the geology. The predominant rock unit is the Table Mountain Sandstone, or more properly, the Peninsula...
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Hoerikwaggo Trail 3: Joints, veins, and Liesegang banding
The Table Mountain Sandstone that we examined yesterday is not pristine at Table Mountain National Park. It’s been fractured in many places, and those fractures have facilitated fluid flow through the...
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Friday fold: Hoerikwaggo Trail 5
And so now it’s Friday, and our Hoerikwaggo Trail series comes to a close in the only way it appropriately can: with a look at the folds of Table Mountain. Table Mountain is in the Cape Fold Belt....
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Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux
The week before last, on the flight home from Texas, I finished reading Dark Star Safari, Paul Theroux’s 2004 account of traveling overland through Africa from Cairo to Cape Town. I’ve enjoyed...
View ArticleHeadin’ west
Well, it’s that time of the year again. Tomorrow morning, I pack up the car and head west. I’m giving myself five days to drive out to Bozeman, Montana, with three stops along the way to see people I...
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Strained stylolites at Foamhenge
One thing that’s 100% worth doing if you find yourself visiting Natural Bridge, Virginia, is to pop in for a visit at Foamhenge, an art installation a few miles away. Foamhenge is a full-scale replica...
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Sailing Alone Around the World, by Joshua Slocum
One thing I got out of reading (listening to) Atlantic, by Simon Winchester, was a recommendation to read a classic story of adventure: Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World. As you might...
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A tale of three iguanas
As noted last week, I spent the week spanning New Year’s Eve in the enchanted isles of the Galapagos. The previous week (over Christmas) my family and I were in coastal Ecuador. I saw a total of three...
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The Dragon Behind the Glass, by Emily Voigt
A whole book about aquarium fish? Yes, it’s possible, when the fish is the Asian arowana. The subtitle of Emily Voigt’s The Dragon Behind the Glass is “A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World’s...
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