Leaving Mossel Bay and Time on the Beach

Tuesday, Oct 19  South Africa

This reminded me of Cushing with all the oil storage tanks!

Pickup Load!

Seal Island in Mossel Bay

Seal Island is located in Mossel Bay and the seals have adapted somewhat to the sharks in the area by going out to feed after dark and coming back before it gets daylight.  We were watching a special on the "South Africa Discovery Channel" about this, and it was interesting that the sharks are adapting to the seals feeding, and they have begun feeding at night when the seals are out.   Here at Wilderness Dunes is the first time we've even had tv.  We watch it in the early mornings or late eves - mainly getting up and going to bed.  Most of the time we are out and about.

After Arriving back to our chalet today...we managed to navigate our way DOWN 263 steps to the beach.  Our own 63 and then we saw a note on the handrail that read 200 steps... hey, we are getting used to them by now.  Beach was sandy, except at the point which was quite rocky. There were thousands of little snails feeding all along the beach as the surf came in and out.

The beach was covered in these snails...

We also found this creature that had floated ashore.  It was a cross between an air-filled cellophane small balloon-like creature and a jelly fish... was so weird.  It was mostly a bluish clear and had tentacles.  It was barely moving, but we could tell it was something alive.

I found out this is a Man-of-War and is venomous...even if dead!
Good thing we didn't touch it!

We also came across another weird substance, at first again we thought it was a jelly fish of some sort, but the more we looked at it, we think it was some kind of plant. It was a big firm blob of gelatin like substance.  The snails seemed to like it.  There were little pieces floating around as the wave came in and out.

Anyone know what this is?

I have to laugh, it doesn't take much to entertain us sometimes.

While we were strolling the beach, we also saw a guy at the top of the ridge with a parasail, so we hung around that area until the wind was finally right for him and he jumped off and sailed along the bluff's edge above the beach.  Looked like fun.  He sailed out towards the rocky point and then made a turn and headed back up the sandy beach area to land quite nicely, never missed a step!

We hung around the beach until sunset and then trekked back up the steps to finish the sunset from our deck.

I had only taken our small pocket camera with us to the beach and I wanted the bigger camera for the sunset... in-fact I wished I had had it for all the strange creatures and plants we ran across.  Oh well, nice afternoon on the beach.