We're Alive

Today our hotel drove us from Hermanus to Gansbaai where we would meet up with our Great White Shark cage diving tour, Marine Dynamics. Originally we were scheduled to go with another company but due to the high winds and poor weather throughout the night, they cancelled the tour. The hotel arranged us a tour for the same time, same day, with another company should be want to go. Damn them. Of course, we went.

Now, I should mentioned that I have a phobia of dark water and whales or large fish (childhood trauma), and Ryan hates the water and has a seaweed phobia (go to work on that one, psychologist friends). This is not exactly our dream excursion.

Had a lump of coal been shoved up our assholes on the way there, we could have pooped out a diamond in a matter of seconds. Both of us were more than tense but at that point, there was no turning back. Our driver dropped us off, we signed away our lives on the paperwork, and we headed toward the boat.

Once we were aboard, we were given a wetsuit, wetsuit booties, an inflatable lifejacket should we need it, and a raincoat. I am pleased to say we did not need the lifejacket or coat. We also had our camera bag with us which I was bitching about initially but it captured one or two cool shots about about 3000 shitty ones of dark water.

I wasn't looking forward to wearing a wet suit in public at all but after stuffing myself into it, I'm considering wearing one at all times under my clothing. It won't make me look smaller and still shows my belly but at least it mashes my boobs down and sort of forms my torso into a trunk instead of profiling my lady lumps.

We anchored and the crew got to work. Tuna heads were bound together with some sort of rope (something ingest-able, I assume - the company is very keen on keep the sharks healthy and doing research to increase their numbers), and chum (blech) was stirred up which slowly leaked out of the boat to attract the sharks. The crew also threw in a board shaped like a black seal. Harmless really... only, what does that board look like to you? A miniature version of, oh, I don't know, a HUMAN IN A BLACK WETSUIT?!

We waited at the first site for about an hour with no luck. They hauled up the anchor and headed toward another spot that another company was just leaving after some luck. Within minutes, there was a sighting. The first was a 4 meter long male. Un-FREAKING-believable. This is not, by far, the biggest sharks there are to see. They can grow to about 6 meters (20 feet) but even seeing 'a small one' at 12-13 feet was amazing.

After a couple sightings they lowered the cage into the water and the first few went in. You line up like a row of sardines with only a mask and when they yell, for example, "DOWN, RIGHT!," you hold your breath and do just that. Before you know it, you literally have one of these magnificent animals within feet from your face.

Like I said, we were both shit scared before hand but once everything had been explained to us and we were in the water, it was really peaceful and inspiring. You're witnessing an enormous, graceful animal manoeuvre through the water in his (all 15 we saw were male) natural environment.

The sharks are attracted to this area because of Geyser Island which is a stones throw from Dyer Island, just off the coast. Geyser Island has between 40K and 60K seals on it at any given point. On our way back, we stopped between the two islands (known as Shark Alley) and took a few pictures. Only the mothers and young pups were there. Apparently in November/December, they jockey for space and the rock is totally blanketed with creatures (by the way, those darks things in the water isn't seaweed... it's seals). Unfortunately these photos don't do the spectacle justice. It's magnificent to see. Our telephoto lens was already stowed away because we were on our way back and didn't want to get it sprayed by the splash off of the bow.

I can't say enough about our outing today. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. We both think it was the best adventurous thing we've ever done on vacation (which maybe isn't saying much) and has opened the door to many other things in the future (I'll tell Ryan later. Hey, he's the one who insisted we do this!).

AND... if that wasn't enough, here's how the view from our hotel room balcony is topping off our day. Bliss.