PE : Bayworld

When I was in primary school our family visited Port Elizabeth.  One of the highlights of that trip was a visit to Bayworld and the dolphin show at the oceanarium.  This was what we saw on our visit in 1988:

So I was disappointed when we visited Bayworld in April this year.  There were no dolphins.  They were moved to Ocean Park in Hong Kong in 2009.  This was necessary to prevent inbreeding and to give Bayworld time to upgrade their facilities to international standards.  It is sad for visitors to the park but a good thing for the dolphins. 

We decided that without dolphins we are not going to wait to see a show.  We did go see the Snake Park and Port Elizabeth Museum.

Snake Park
The snake and reptile park is not very big.  There are a few glass enclosures with different snakes.  Each enclosure has a poster with information about the snake.  They vary from the green mamba to the brown house snake.  Outside are a few open enclosures.  Most looked empty but we did see a hungry tortoise and a lonely crocodile.


PE Museum
We started at the Dinosaur Hall with displays of rocks, fossils and life-size models of dinosaurs.

The Maritime History Hall was our favourite.  It has exhibits of shipping and earle explorers.  There are artifacts from shipwrecks found near PE including different cannons.  The landing basket was very interesting.  It was used to load and off-load passenger on ships.  There is also more information about the Sacremento galleon, which wrecked in1647, and information about the process to recover the surviving cannons.




















Next we went to the marine Hall with the huge skeleton of a Southern right whale.  This was one of the last whales to be harpooned in Algoa Bay.  Also on display are models of sharks and other fishes.

The first floor also has a camera room with a lot of old and new cameras on display and a costume room with clothes from the 1960’s.
Location: Beach Rd, Port Elizabeth 6001, South Africa

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