Point of Venus

For those who had read earlier blogs, you know this was on my must do list. This was where Captain Cook had tried to record the transit of  the planet Venus over the sun - as part of a number of people on earth trying to calculate celestial distances. What I reminded my driver was that Charles Darwin on another occasion stopped here. It is not clear why this eminent personage is not in local reckoning. I took photos but it is all rather well trodden perhaps by millions of locals and tourists since then, and doesnt have much in the way of redeeming features. Stacks of people swimming off the rich black sand shore. Hand size crabs scurrying into python sized holes in the black soil. Apparently they taste like mud unless kept in a cage and fed coconut to clean them out. So not much to say about the markers of earlier western civilisation encroaching; a 1867 lighthouse once manual and now electronic, a white painted cement monstrosity recording Capt Cook's visit, and a bizarre memorial to the missionaries. A triathlon was underway nearby - events these days are so global.  With nothing to hold us, we set off again.