We was munkeys (Gauteng - cradle of humankind)

[shark_za]

If you wanna get in touch with your roots, take a look at the cradle of mankind North of Krugersdorp.
Declared a world heritage site.
I guess they are bike friendly as the parking is cheaper for bikes than cars.
The Sterkfontein Caves are cool, worth a visit, and the new museum called Maropeng is world class.
The caves are where they found the skull of a Australopithecus Africanus the oldest human ancestor.  Another discovery was made after this of an even more intact skeleton called "Little Foot".
Good to go and see, I managed to bunk school the day we went there I guess, it was new to me.

If the queue to get on the silly boat ride introduction at maropeng is long , bypass it and just goto the museum. The ride is lame anyways.

S26 01.091 E27 43.962 - Caves
S25 58.649 E27 39.849 - Maropeng Entrance.

Think it was R60 each place.  About $10.

The area is well sign posted with the brown tourism signs so you should not have a problem finding it.

[LiveInTheOutdoors]

I thought that from the title that this was going to be a silly post... Sharkeyboy, this is a great piece of info, and particularly for those who havent been before... wonderful stuff.

[JourneyMan]

Also was there early Jan with the kids. Thought to take them even though the price seemed a bit high for looking at a few bones. :shock:

Surprise, surprise. Very, very interesting place with "Disneyland" type of experience. Lots of interactive things for the kids. Not just looking but participating for them as well. Picking up telephones and listining to extict animals talk to you, plasma screens with video's, etc. etc.

Will try and post a few pics later.

Definately worth a visit, even for us adults.

[JourneyMan]

Place is not finished yet with the fossil, hotel and a few other things still to be done.

The boat ride. Round "boat" which takes four persons through a tunnel which depicts certain forces/elements of nature.


After the tunnel, you enter a room where the creation and changes of earth over the millenia is depicted. Awesome. The sphere of earth is hanging in front of you in black space and it changes as earth developed. About 15 different "shots". Cool three dimentional projection technology is used with mirrors and I don't know what else. I was mesmerized.





From there into the display hall.

This is part of the display hall.



Some displays.






Extinct animals "talking" to you. Who they were, where they lived, what they ate, habitat and why extinct.




And much, much more.


Thoroughly enjoyable for all envolved.

[shark_za]

And the woolly mammoth was some old german jewish chick, haha.
The dodo had a french accent...

Those phones were cool.

[LiveInTheOutdoors]

Wow, nice addition there mate. Thanks! I had the pleasure of spelunking through there when there was nothing but bats guano and millions of bats and a cows rotting carcass. It had fallen in the whole, broken bones and died there sadly. Smelly as hell.

But we had headlamps and torches and overalls and man did we come out FILTHY. We also had the pleasure of seeing pure untouched stalactites and stalagmites and exploring caves which seemed to be unexplored. Man, it was real tight on your tummy stuff that if you had ANY size boop, youre stuffed.

That was when I was skinny still        

And how can u say pure bitch black darkness, so dark you couldnt see your fingers 3cm from your eyes. Its also the only time I got so close to a baby bat hanging from a wall at shoulder level, that we could touch it. It was shaking so bad.... awesome experiences...

Sweet!