Picture perfect - 11:43 pm

02 Mar 2010

The terrestrial crew needs to film with the best light possible and these ideal times happen to be at sunrise and at dusk. This is why Boris and Sakhile can be heard giggling and pottering around the kitchen at 4 am. Being woken up at this time has its obvious disadvantages but once you are up it is actually the most beautiful time of the day to be awake.

Grant and I walked just outside our little house here and were greeted by the most epic sunrise I have ever seen. We stayed here for ages taking pictures and taking about the tides here in Pomene, which seem to govern the lay of the land. It is the last set of spring tides before equinox, which means that there are extreme tidal differences between high and low tide.

To give you an idea of the amount of water I am talking about, it is over 4 vertical meters of difference in the water levels, this is all moving into an estuary of about 10 square kilometers through two mouths which roughly equates to 400 000 cubic meters of water passing in and out of this estuary every six hours. And I thought I had a productive morning.

With all of this moving water, sandbanks are also constantly on the move. Inlets get carved out of the land by the intense push and pull of tidal energy. Casuarina trees literally get uprooted by the waves and are left upturned, like shipwrecks on the shore.

The most wonderful lesson you learn out in the field is that nature will always be in charge. Being exposed to these elements makes you realise that we need to be malleable enough to coexist with this beautiful planet and get the heck out of the way when she tells us too.

Leah B

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