Dive! Dive! Dive!

Hey there folks!

As i'm sure you're now aware - i have not been eaten alive, and i'm happy to report that all my limbs and appendages are where they should be. But before i get onto the exciting stuff, let's recap on where we left off shall we?

I think last night's blog culminated with the imminency of our first Brai. Well, the night was awesome - Vij and myself just kicked it with the South Africans that run the place and had a top laugh. They're great guys and have totally amazing accents. I can't help myself stealing certain South African-isms now. So sorry when i get home and i go "Ja ja" instead of yes. It's happening without me realising already! The Brai itself was awesome, and was top class food, but it's the banter that really made the night if you ask me! Real top guys. We also beat them at pool. I say "we" - most of the credit goes to Vij, i just stumble upon the odd good pot or two.

Ok, ok... let's move on to the bit that you REALLY want to read about. The sharks. Well, after having the first good night's sleep in AGES (complete with fever at 2.30am), we got the bus down to Gansbaai and onto our mighty vessel: Megalodon II. The place where we dived is the so-called "Shark Alley" - look it up on the internet. We moored up, attached and lowered the cage... and waited...

The water was chummed heavily with a fake type of blood. The company we went with are ethical and don't use real guts or blood like others - so the sharks don't go into a blind fury and try to destroy everything. Although i'm sure that's pretty amazing to witness, i don't think i'd be happy with myself as a naturalist doing that to the sharks... But yes... we waited...

Dive, dive, dive! We got our first glimpse of the 1st Great White - which by my reckoning was c. 4.5m in length. Not something you should take lightly. I was watching from the boat at this point, as the cage was full... but soon enough my time came...

Dive! Dive! Dive! I buryed my head under the water in the cage to see this goliath body cruising by. Sleek and grey, fierce yet graceful. If the wetsuit wasn't keeping me so damn snug, i'd have had goosebumps at seeing this baby. It was about 5m away from the cage, and still perfectly visible, which was great. Then it was time for me to leave the cage - i was determined this wouldn't be my last dive... and it wasn't...

I was lucky enough to loiter around enough for the Dive Master to let me into the cage again - only one of 2 people that were lucky enough. This time when we dived a DIFFERENT Great White was circling, and this boy was a lot more aggressive than its older sibling. I'd say this shark was about 3.5m - not far off the bigger one for sure, and it was still very impressive to see! This time, the shark got REAL up close and personal, at the closest it swam in front of the cage about 50cm away from me. WOW!! I had that feeling of excitement and terror and the same time. There's an instinct in your body saying "dude, you shouldn't be here - get the hell away!!", but i'm pretty good at overriding my angels and demons at times, and i just held myself there underwater staring in awe. Again and AGAIN it came at the cage, and each time was magical. Lamentably, it didn't bite onto the cage, as has been known to happen in other dives, but it was still something to behold. Quite literally, this is one of the best experiences of my life. You can keep (most) of the ladies, nookie and hanky panky to yourself - i rank this above (most of) it ;-) for sheer excitement and thrills. What made me a tad nervous was the fact that i later realised that my method of anchoring myself to the bottom of the cage in fact left my entire foot out the back of the cage. Therefore, had the shark swum around the back of the cage / bottom of the boat, it could easily have torn my foot off. I quite like my foot, despite it looking a bit worse for wear at the minute! Haha.

Also, you'll be happy to hear that i photographed this from underwater and some of the shots have turned out terrific, despite me blindly clicking away! I can't wait to show them all to you, especially the one where it's REAL close to the cage. Incidentally, we have the CD of the whale kayak photos too - and there's some corkers on there too - we look very fetching in our pink kayak ha!

So, what next for our intrepid adventurers? Well, tomorrow we head off to a town known as Storm's River a few 100km East of here in preparation for our 218m bungee jump off the Bloukrans Bridge on Saturday. You can't accuse us of not taking risks and loading up on adrenaline can you!? Nothing is quite going to be the same after this trip i can tell you...

Much love,

Aaron x