The Great White Adventure

After epic adventures in Cape Town, along the Garden Route and on the Sunshine Coast I am back in Joburg, ready to make my way towards Mozambique...

Cape Town proved to be the most dangerous, colorful, exciting and picturesque city I visited in SA....the mix of cultures, city life and natural beauty, rocky mountains and sandy beaches, green landscapes and blue oceans, wildlife and South Africans were unforgettable...I finished my time in Cape Town with a trip to the top of Table Mountain, an excursion out to Cape Point (where we saw wild baboons) and re-learning how to drive (steering wheel on the right, gears on the left, driving on the left side of the road, etc.)...

My next stop after CPT was a quiet, rural town along the Garden Route called Oudtshoorn...not much to do in Oudtshoorn, but nearby in Mossel Bay there was Great White Shark diving!!!!

I showed up on an early Thursday morning, ready to get close and personal with some sharks...but, to my dismay, the boat's captain had something to say: "We're dealing with wild animals in their natural habitat. We, as crew members, have no control over these sharks. We just do the best we can to attract the sharks with fish guts. We CANNOT guarantee seeing ANY sharks today....That being said, we have seen at least one shark everyday for the last two weeks and two days ago we saw a record number, 5 different sharks! So let's go!!!" Needless to say, I was nervous about not seeing any sharks

About an hour into setting anchor and chumming nasty, rotten, dead fish into the water, I heard "SHARK AROUND!!" Instinctively, I sprinted to the cabin, stripped down to my undies, slipped on the wetsuit and jumped in the water before anybody else even moved...I was the first in the water and saw PLENTY of action! While in the water, 3 other sharks showed up and I stared face to face with one of them about 5 inches away...it was AWESOME!!! After 20 minutes of seeing plenty of shark, I hopped out and started taking pictures/videos from the boat deck. Seven different sharks visited us throughout the day!!! At one point, there were six different sharks swimming around our boat!!! And all of them were Great Whites!! It was unbelievable!

After Mossel Bay, I stopped along the coast in Knysna (a beautiful port town) and Jeffry's Bay (surfer's paradise). Those smaller coastal towns couldn't have been more different from Cape Town or Joburg...very quiet, much safer and amazingly mellow...I had some awesome adventures hiking on my own again, jumping off the highest bungy jump in the world, meeting lots of other travelers (including a group of ladies from BC and a dood from Port Angeles, Washington) and replenishing my soul :)

Now, it's off to Mozambique!!