Year 12 trip to Sutherland
The second week of the new term had students from our Year 12 class going on the annual trip to Sutherland. Designed as a physics trip, despite the trip being open for anyone to attend, the main activity on the agenda was a visit to SALT – the South African Large Telescope.
We left early Wednesday morning, stopping off in Worcester briefly, before we headed to Matjiesfontein for the afternoon. In the very small town, we visited the famous hotel as well as the transportation museum where we had the chance to look at vintage cars and trains. We also enjoyed a lunch at the town’s restaurant where we all eyed an overhead pigeon sceptically as we ate. Not to worry though as we all walked away thankfully clean.
It was not long after this that we arrived at Rogge Cloof – the farm we were staying at. Unlike all other camps, the trip to Sutherland boasts the opportunity to stay in actual cottages rather than the typical camp dorms, something we were all very happy about. Quickly dropping our bags in our rooms, we all headed down to the pool to cool off from the scorching heat before we borrowed some bikes to ride around the farm.
Dinner was shortly after this where after we were able to just relax before the next day’s activities. Before the day came to a close; however, our group had the privilege of seeing a meteor falling brightly through the sky as we all made our way back to our rooms.
Thursday had us all up early to enjoy a delicious breakfast before we had a quick presentation about what kinds of fossils we would see on the fossil drive that was next. Spending about 3 hours on the vehicles touring around the farm had us seeing a volcano, various different fossils in the fossil field, springbok and even a zebra! After the long drive we were all quite happy to be greeted by homemade pizzas for lunch, before we had to get ready again to head into the town of Sutherland.
Our first stop on the agenda was the South African Astronomical Observatory where we visited not only the South African Large Telescope but also one of the first telescopes on the site, the 1m telescope. The guides at the observatory showed us around before we had the privilege to be the first ISCT group who had the chance to view them repositioning the telescope and its 91 mirrors.
After this we had an early dinner at a small restaurant where a game of UNO quickly commenced as we enjoyed various dishes from curry to waffles. Next we made our way to the town’s planetarium. For the next hour we were shown two educational videos until it was time to drive to our final stop for some stargazing. This was definitely the highlight of the trip as we got the rare experience of seeing 4 planets – Venus, Saturn, Mars and Jupiter – as well as a comet!
Our final day on the farm was spent on another drive where we took a quick walk down to the Poet’s Cave, a cave on the farm where a famous Afrikaans poet spent much of his youth. Sadly after this; however, we had to pack up as we did our final room checks before we made our way back to Cape Town after an amazing experience.
-Hannah
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