FINS to the left...

The driver for shark diving picked us up, as promised, at 6:45 am. I had foolishly taken my malaria pill without food (they'd be serving us breakfast when we arrived in Gansbaai) so on the ride there I felt kind of sick. We arrived at the shark place where they had breakfast all ready for us, which was really good. I noted the pictures of brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Leonardo DiCaprio (along with Halle Berry, Anderson Cooper, and other celebs) who have done the shark diving there. I think Matt Damon must have done it right after the shooting for Invictus wrapped (said he did it in March of 2009). Anyway, we walked down to the boat, the Baracuda. On the boat we were told they had clean towels, a toilet, and even soft drinks and sandwiches for us. We headed out. Also on the boat with us was a father and son from New Zealand, a German girl studying abroad in Stellenbosch, and a rather large dude with a tourist guide. They filled us in on the key info, that we'd get our wetsuits on out on the water, and how to behave in the cage. They stressed heavily that when the tell you "down!" you have to go down, or it could somehow be dangerous. Also that it's key that everyone go down into the cage at once or it could scare the shark away.

We arrived at "Shark Alley", where there are rocks with about 50,000-60,000 seals - aka 50,000 reasons that you may see a shark on the trip. The seals were so cute! Very fun to see them. Then the crew starting throwing fish chum (like liquified wasted parts of fish bodies) to attract the sharks, as well as a tuna fish head attached to a small floating buoy that they'd throw out on a rope and the pull back in when a shark came over. Right away we started seeing lots of great white sharks all around us in the water. Then they gave everyone wetsuits and we out them on. Sam and I at first thought we had to wear the hoods on the wetsuits which made us both pretty claustrophobic. Add to this that the boat was rocking like crazy and I was feeling pretty seasick (I was surprised by this since I've been on/around boas my whole life and had never felt even remotely seasick before. So I was pretty glad when the time came to get in the water - I was the first one in the cage!

The cage holds 7 people at once, so all 6 of us fit in it at once. There is a bar wrapped in yellow rope that you kneel on just below the water level, and you rest your butt back against these gray floats they have along the back of the cage to keep it floating alongside the boat. Then when they yell "down!" you use your hands to push down and then you stand on the bottom of the cage and look up toward the surface to see the shark go by. They put kind of like a huge necklace of weights over your shoulders so that you can stay down easily for long enough, usually about 7-8 seconds. The first shark we saw from the cage was just terrifying, but then I realized that they really couldn't care less about the people in the cage. They are totally focused on that tuna fish head and the fish chum in the water, taunting them. Now this didn't mean that I was going to be sticking any limbs outside of the cage, in fact they very seriously warned us against doing this, because you could easily lose a limb, after all. Me in the cage:



They had waterproof cameras you could rent for R300 (in the neighborhood of $50). So I got one and took pictures, but then decided not to actually get/pay for the pictures, if you decide not to take the pictures then the. Don't charge you, so since we got pretty good pics above the surface, and the underwater ones weren't so super we decided to skip it.

The shark diving is soooo cool. Great Whites are literally in arms length distance from you. If you had the guts/stupidity to stick out a hand to pet them, you could, assuming they didn't take your hand for a snack.


Sam got out of the cage before I did since she felt so claustrophobic in her wetsuit (understandably so). So she took pics of the sharks I was seeing underwater, from the boat. I basically stayed in the water until they made us get out, partially because the sharks are awesome (my life is like shark week!) and partially since I knew if I got back in the boat I'd feel super seasick again.


Cool. Me and Sam in our "triumphant post-shark dive wetsuit picture":



We got back to the place (after the son from NZ puked over the side of the boat - they told us to focus on the horizon and have a Stoney ginger beer if we felt sick. I did use this method but it was definitely imperfect) where they had hot soup and bread for us (Sam and I totally were so into the sharks/I was so sick that we completely forgot about the sandwiches on the boat!). Then they showed us the video, which was pretty hilarious. We decided to skip that too, since they said its fixed so you can't make copies and at over $50 each that seemed ridiculous.

Then the dude drove us back to Green Point, but we had to drop the German girl off in Stellenbosch and this weird borderline creepy woman (probably a cousin of the creeper woman with red hair at our hostel, Sam will be the only one to truly appreciate this reference), so we ended up not having time to get to the botanical gardens after the way we had hoped. Instead we cruised down to the Sea Point Promenade for the sunset... But it was super foggy so we really didn't et a good sunset at all! We had dinner at Sotano, a Mediterranean place in Mouille Point by the lighthouse there on Beach Road. Very nice. Then we hung out with Jose (one of our two favorite Brazilian bartenders) at the bar while we wrote some postcards (including one to the Tombs!)

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