So, today I was picked up at 5:40am and joined a van of people going shark diving! Cape Town is one of the only places you can do this, and the place where you have the best chance of seeing the sharks - especially this time of year. Everyone on this tour was between 22 and 30 so we had no trouble passing out for the 2 hour ride in the dark to Gansbaai. After a quick breakfast and briefing we headed to the harbor where we climbed into our boat, which a tractor then pushed into the water. A zippy 15 minute ride and we dropped anchor to wait for the sharks. The boats usually hang out around Dyer Island and Geyser Rock (home to 40,000 Cape Fur Seals, which attract the sharks) but in the last couple weeks they haven't been seeing them there...so we hung out in the middle of the sea.
The put some fish heads in the water to attract the sharks (sharks don't stay in the area more than a couple days so they don't get used to the trick) and we all squished into wet suits in preparation for a sighting and the mid-60 degree water. I was in the second group of five to head into the cage. The cage is attached to one side of the boat and has steel bars which kind of interfere with the shark's ability to sense we are there. Something about electro-magnetism. You just wear a mask - scuba gear tends to scare them off - and a weight belt and when the people above see the shark coming for the bait or just to check the cage out they tell you to go under....so you do, and you see a 3 meter great white shark swimming right at you! The view from the boat is even better because often you can see them coming a bit out of the water. Visibility was less than average today which I think impacted my impression...it was cool to see, but not life changing. Maybe I've just seen too many cool things lately! You stay in the cage in the water for 10 or 15 minutes and then they change it up, and you can go back again if you want. I found the cage crowded, bumpy, wavy, and that the sharks were only there for like 2 seconds so by the time you saw them they were gone. This could be due to the visibility issue.
Even though they said the sea was the calmest they had seen it in years the waves were still two meters and lots of the guys were hurling overboard. I met 5 cool guys who just finished engineering at the University of Calgary, so hung out with them most of the day. I can do a pretty good job passing for a 22 year old guy. I wasn't feeling great either by the end of this, so was happy when the guy in charge said something weird happened with the tides and the harbor was draining of water so we had to book it back. Made it with just minutes to spare - in the 2.5 hours we were gone the harbor went down 2 meters of water! They had to get a second tractor to pull us in!
After feeding us we drove back to Cape Town, this time in daylight. What a beautiful country. We paused in Hermanus which is often called the whale watching capital of South Africa and has some of the best land-based sightings. The season doesn't really start until August and we didn't see much - a few spouts from blowholes in the distance. Also drove by some of the townships - really quite wretched, even today, as well as some of the new housing the government is putting up for the residents...not much better. Insanely close together.
Round the day out with a Thai massage because I saw a place, and haven't seen one since I was in Thailand last summer. It was lovely. Also bought a fleece hat in preparation for Namibia next week!
Of course did not have the iPad in the water with me, but here are a couple pics from the Internet for what it was like. Hope I got some good underwater video on my camera!!
another good day! mom
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