Full Weekend (from last week.. sorry!)

Saturday: community tour & concert

The community tour was one of the days I was looking forward to the most out of everything I could have done here in Cape Town - getting to really know, understand and get a feel for the location and culture of the people was a depth I craved. My inner geography geek was like a sponge - ready to soak up all the stories and information on the incredibly interesting history of the country and area. And I will do my best to dispense this knowledge in a later post, so definitely look forward to that.

That took up the majority of the day, and afterwards we had planned to try and hike Table Top Mountain but the weather wasn't great so all we would have been able to see would have been clouds. Instead we relaxed at the house and talked and played games before heading to Cape Town city hall for a gig as a part of the Fringe Festival - an indoor event over three days in the city hall. The act we went to see was called the HatchettGroup

Sunday: I survived shark cage diving & a sunset on top of Signal Hill

I had to be up at 4:30am on Sunday to be picked up by the shark cage diving company bus. Me Aane and Andreas (the Scandinavian lads I bunked with) managed to get out of bed on time and catch the bus just fine. We were met by a tall broad man with a thick South African accent and with even thicker arms. And by the force of his hand shake I knew we were in safe hands! Thankfully once we were on the bus we had a nice 2 hour journey / sleep to Gansbaai. The Gansbaai area in the Western Cape is a hotspot for marine life - it has lots of naturally well protected bays thanks to the peninsula. Which makes it the perfect spot for whales to bring up their young. One of the volunteers I am currently working with is going to do a 2-3 month internship there after having volunteered at AfricanImpact, as she wants read marine biology at university.

When we arrived we witnessed a beautiful sunrise over the South Atlantic Ocean and got to eat a spot of breakfast and be briefed on the do / don'ts of shark cage diving. As in don't poke anything out of the cage when the sharks come past! He also explained how all the procedures worked and got everyone settled, and reduced the nervous tension in our bodies. For example. he told us the metal of the cage gives off a small magnetic field, which is uninteresting for the shark. It senses this and this alone so cannot actually tell there is anything alive inside the cage. You are one object.

Once that was over we got changed into our swimming gear to wear under the wet suits (we had been warned that the water is extremely cold.) And then wrapped up warm for the 15 minute boat journey to a shallow bay not far from seal island. Fun fact: most of the time sharks don't eat the seals because they are too hard to catch so wouldn't be worth it. The shark could even come off worse if the seal gets too close behind it and decides to bite the shark! The boat we used was only just big enough to carry all 20 crew and passengers on the lower deck and then it had a small upper deck as well.

When we finally dropped anchor we changed into wet suits and was expecting a 30 minute - 1 hour wait for any sharks to arrive. But almost immediately we had a 3m shark investigating the bait - it was so exciting! I managed to get a great view from the front of the ship. Next came the actual diving - the cage we were in was very small, so could only fit 5 people in. Furthermore it was always attached to the boat so you didn't have to be fully submerged all the time and there was no 360 view which would have just complicated things. All you had to do was hold onto the bars and stick your face underwater for 5-10 seconds at a time to water a shark lazily glide past. As the water is so murky the visibility was no more than 2m, so to see the shark it had to come close, and boy did they! It was fantastic, they're such majestic creatures and they came close enough to touch! One even clipped the cage with its fin!

sorry for the late post but hope it was okay! limited time at the wifi cafe! xx