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It was strange to finish a cricket match soon after midday on Tuesday. Less strange was the result, as we are unfortunately getting used to .

Normally, a 9.00am arrival for a 50-over one-day international would see us filing the last interviews and reports at about 7.30 or 8.00pm. But after 2.00pm, we had no other commitments, so while Aggers took to the skies to clock up some more hours piloting small planes, Adam Mountford and I strolled along the beach to check out .

My guide book tells me it has “one of the world’s largest aquariums, the biggest collection of sharks in the southern hemisphere, a seal stadium, and Africa’s largest dolphinarium.” Unfortunately, we had missed the dolphin display, were too late to see the seals being fed and the shark diving experience was closed. The aquarium, nevertheless, was an educational experience.

Whilst watching a sleepy looking octopus through a thick pane of glass, Adam disclosed to me how he had once drawn an octopus for a school project and mistakenly scrawled an arrow labelling its “testicles” instead of tentacles!

Among my favourite fish were the Spotted Grunter, the Cowfish, the Devil Firefish and a giant Stingray which looked just like the Millenium Falcon out of Star Wars (see picture right above). Some fish have brilliant ‘facial’ expressions as well. One bore a striking resemblance to South Africa fast bowler Andre Nel when he has been slogged for six
.. (see picture below left)

The most thought provoking part of the tour so far though has been a visit to the . District Six is an area of Cape Town which was classified as a white area in 1966 – the year England were happily celebrating the football World Cup.

I snatched a couple hours at the museum when we had a night game, and was moved to read the personal testimonies from some of the 50,000-odd black residents who were displaced from their homes and relocated to desolate townships on the Cape Flats.

The land was bulldozed but it was never redeveloped as a white area and in 2000 President Thabo Mbeki signed a document returning it to its former inhabitants. The area is still largely derelict today, and although there are plans to build new homes in the next few years, it seems District Six will never have the same sense of place or community its residents once enjoyed.