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15 May 2013
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 Theroux’s traveling writing very much over the years, and although he’s written some great novels (I’m thinking of Mosquito Coast), most of them don’t appeal to me as much as the travelogues do. I’ve been reading a lot …
22 February 2013
Friday fold: Martin’s metamorphics
A guest “Friday fold” from South Africa: folded gneisses, flavored with other treats of a geological nature.
25 January 2013
Friday fold: Gansbaai
A small mountain inland of Gansbaai, South Africa (where one goes to cage-dive with great white sharks) shows some of the folding characteristic of the Cape Fold Belt. Let’s zoom in… A few bedding traces annotated, to ease your armchair fold-viewing experience. I think this is my final photo from South Africa… Wow. Only took me 1.05 years to get them all up on this blog. Next up: polishing off …
11 January 2013
Friday fold: Hoerikwaggo Trail 5
We wrap up our week-long odyssey along South Africa’s Hoerikwaggo Trail with a look at something we look at every Friday: folds! In this case, we’ll be examining folds in the bedding layers of the Table Mountain Sandstone.
10 January 2013
Hoerikwaggo Trail 4: fynbos vegetation
Callan continues his week-long recounting of his five-day backpacking trip from the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Town, South Africa, along the Hoerikwaggo Trail. Today, we examine the ‘fynbos’ plants seen along the trail.
9 January 2013
Hoerikwaggo Trail 3: Joints, veins, and Liesegang banding
Callan continues his week-long recounting of his five-day backpacking trip from the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Town, South Africa, along the Hoerikwaggo Trail. Today, we examine the jointing, oxidizing and reducing fluid flow, and the emplacement of ore veins.
8 January 2013
Hoerikwaggo Trail 2: the Table Mountain Sandstone
Callan continues his week-long recounting of his five-day backpacking trip from the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Town, South Africa, along the Hoerikwaggo Trail. Today, we examine the Table Mountain Sandstone.
7 January 2013
Hoerikwaggo Trail 1: the hike
Callan begins a week-long recounting of his five-day backpacking trip from the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Town, South Africa, along the Hoerikwaggo Trail. Today, we examine scenery and logistics of the trail.
31 October 2012
A few folds from Betty’s Bay
Here are a few folds in the quartzites of the Cape Fold Belt, exposed on the mountainsides of the Harold Porter Botanical Gardens in Betty’s Bay, South Africa. Hillside #1: Zooming in closer: Annotated (bedding traced out): Hillside #2: Zooming in on summit region: Annotated (bedding traced out): Zooming in on the central portion of the hill: Annotated (bedding traced out): The Cape Fold Belt – there it is!
27 October 2012
Salt crystals in a tidal pool, Hermanus
Last winter, around 10 months ago, Lily and I were walking along the shore of Hermanus, South Africa, when I saw a little closed-drainage pool in the sandstone, harboring a briny distillation of the South Atlantic Ocean. Neat salt “rim” on the edge of the pool… Also note the ~cubic crystals at the bottom of the pool. Super, eh? Supersaturated….
Callan Bentley is Associate Professor of Geology at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. For his work on this blog, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers recognized him with the James Shea Award. He has also won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, and the Biggs Award for Excellence in Geoscience Teaching from the Geoscience Education Division of the Geological Society of America. In previous years, Callan served as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine, President of the Geological Society of Washington and President the Geo2YC division of NAGT.