Although everyone in our Nature Club is very committed and nine times out of ten we have all four families there, last week found us having to change plans at short notice due to two families having other engagements.
So I thought it might be nice to take advantage of the great weather we had and we headed to Dale Brook Tidal pool to (hopefully) catch a glimpse of the whales in the bay.
WARNING: when heading towards Kalk Bay in a car, the entrance to the parking lot has changed it's position. Don't drive past it like me and end up having to park far away from your planned destination!
Hopefully the road works will soon be finished.
When we met our friends in the parking lot this was our view.
More evidence that spring has sprung.
Beautiful.
A short distance from this parking lot, heading back towards Cape Town, you will find some steps which lead to this beautiful treasure along our coast line.
Dale Brook Tidal pool.
Not too sure why I didn't pack in costumes that day.
I remembered everything but the costumes! Why is it always one thing that gets left behind?!
Not minding that they were without costumes the children quickly stripped down to their underwear and ran with squeals of delight towards the pool.
Our rocks are not white here in South Africa-these were probably painted during a spring low tide.
Although they are not natural they add to the beauty of the surroundings.
The water was cold and it was at quite a high level. You could just see the wall dividing the water in the pool from the vast expanse of sea beyond the wall.
It took me a while to catch this photo, and it still doesn't show you how awesome the waves were crashing over the pool wall.
The view towards Kalk Bay Harbour.
The view from the safety of the pool side.........she just can't wait to be big enough to join those three crazy kiddies playing in the water!
And then finally the view we all had been waiting for.
A Southern Right Whale waving it's flipper at us.
These whales return here every year at this time to give birth to their calves.
In fact, one had been spotted last week which had just given birth near this spot!
So after seeing what we had come to see and after a glorious time in the pool we headed off for some more exploring.
A quick stop to watch the road works. What fun for the big machine loving boys-we even got to see a digger which was precariously trying to balance on a mound of sand. It quickly let down it's stabiliser's to help it to balance, much to the delight of our boys.
Just opposite the Dale Brook pool you'll find the Shark Center.
I've wanted to pop in there for some time so I thought we'd do that on this particular day.
Inside a very friendly, shark loving guy invited us to look inside their fish or rather, shark tank.
We had fun finding some of the secrets hiding in the water.
Can you spy the shark's egg here? It's often called a mermaid's purse.
There are some lovely books and dvd's on sale there and they kindly offered for us to watch one of the dvd's in their upstairs room.
I'm not sure what this little man enjoyed more, the dvd or the plastic shark toys?
A lovely morning, once again, spent with our nature club friends.....well some of them.
No matter how small the group is it's still fun to get out into nature with our friends.
And the good news is we'll be returning to a nearby beach this week with everyone from the club.
Perhaps we'll be lucky enough to catch another glimpse of our whale friend!
Our nature fun for the day didn't end there though.
When we returned home we found a very nervous Charity who had had her own nature experience!
This little slug eater has probably been in our cupboard all winter.
(good thing we're busy doing spring cleaning!)
It was busy shedding it's skin when we found it.
And of course this little man was only too eager to adopt it.
It took a bit of convincing to get him to agree that we couldn't keep it as a pet!
This post features on the South African Carnival of Homeschool Bloggers where South African home schoolers share experiences, ideas, philosophies and much more. You can join the carnival too by heading to the South African Carnival of Homeschool Bloggers sign up page. In the meantime, head to SACH Carnival #8 - Co-ops and Support Groups for this week's carnival. We hope you enjoy the carnival as much as we have!
