Tuesday, 7 September 2010

The road to the Constantia Valley crosses over 34 degrees South.

34 degrees south follows the road underneath the freeway viaduct
After cresting Wynberg Hill on the M3 south from the city, the road crosses over a small valley on the viaduct in the photograph. This viaduct also happens to "cross over" 34 degrees south. This line of latitude is not recognised in any way in Cape Town (not that I know of) and I guess it is really no big deal. After all, its hardly the Equator or the Tropic of Capricorn or the Arctic Circle! But as this line encircles the globe, is does pass through Port Elizabeth and the southern suburbs of Sydney, Australia. In South America it hits landfall just south of Santiago in Chile and heads across the Atlantic back to Cape Town from from just north of Buenos Aires. In an invisible way it is a sort of connection between all these places and everything else in between. You may not see it on the ground, but you could find it in an atlas or locate it on Google Earth. Big deal or no big deal, this "unseen line" goes under the viaduct in the attached photo - more or less at the point where the road passes underneath.

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