Week 23 - Apr. 14th - 20th
day 155 - day in Cape Town
day 156 - Cape town to Gansbaai (Shark Dive!) to Mossel Bay (by rental car)
day 157 - Mossel Bay to Bungee jump at Storms River then to Knysna then Cape Agulhas
day 158 - Cape Agulhas to Cape Town
day 159 - day in Cape Town
day 160 - day in Cape Town
day 161 - Cape Town to Beaufort West to bush-camp
When you're feeling really low, it's best to jump off things
I'll admit that immediately after my arrival in Cape Town I didn't have much of a desire to do anything other than mope around the hostel in a huff, sulking about my bag being stolen. However I soon realised that the best way to bring me out of my bad mood was to do what I often do when I need to cheer myself up: find yet another way of cheating death by hurling myself off of something rather tall. Fortunately Cape Town and its surrounding area has quite an abundance of activities where a person can do exactly that. The world's highest bungee jump was just a days drive away but we'll get to that later. A solo skydive over Table Mountain would have been an ideal choice of sport but unfortunately the bastards who nabbed my bag also got my skydiving log book which is utterly useless to them but I can't solo skydive without it. So the activity of choice for the day was a relatively calm and tranquil abseil down the kilometre high cliff face of Table Mountain. OK so perhaps I'm exaggerating a little, or more accurately: a lot, in order to make myself sound hard. It's not like I descended the entire height of the mountain on a rope, in actual fact I descended a small fraction of the cliff face and then climbed back up but hey, it is the highest commercial abseil in the world and the views were still rather nice. Perhaps later in life I'll learn to abseil with my own equipment and come back to do the whole thing. Or maybe I'll come back once I've improved my skydiving skills and base jump off the mountain. Despite the fact that a man was killed doing exactly that just a couple of days before.Cuddly little giant unstoppable two ton killing machine
Next up was a great white shark cage dive followed by the aforementioned bungee jump, the so called highest in the world. Actually it isn't quite the highest any more but they obviously didn't want to replace their signs. It is still the highest bridge bungee in the world but then it doesn't sound quite as impressive as 'world's highest' does it now? At any rate we still had to get there, first to the cage dive and then to the bungee. To accomplish this six of us: myself, Greg, Phil, Sean, Pete Toms and Chris Middleton rented two cars and we drove along the coast away from Cape Town.We were glad to get away from the crime filled city for a few days. Almost everyone we spoke to at the hostel had some kind of horror story about a mugging that had happened to themselves or a friend in broad daylight on one of the main streets. Those that been staying at the hostel for a while, or who worked there advised us to not actually bother taking anything at all whatsoever out with us in our pockets and to only travel in big groups. Even Jeremy encountered a rather pitiful quasi-mugging attempt when a thug approached him with a retracted, and therefore harmless, penknife. He pointed the 'weapon' at Jeremy and demanded money,
'give me money.'
'no'
'I've got a knife'
'I can see that'
and Jez promptly walked off unmolested. Quite a laughable attempt at a mugging I think you'll agree but not all criminals are quite so timid. Or inadequately armed. I thought it ironic that we'd made it through the infamous DRC unscathed and with fond memories of the ever friendly villagers and then we barely arrive in South Africa only to have several thefts, mugging attempts and even an attempted camera snatch (fortunately Hisashi was too quick for them).
So at any rate we were glad to be cruising through the scenic countryside, in a car instead of a crowded livestock transporter. Our first stop was Gansbaai for the shark dive. This required leaving Cape Town at the rather ridiculously fresh hour of 4:30 in the morning which was horrendously early even by the early rising standards of the Af-Trails crew. After a two hour drive we were in Gansbaai, tired and cold and still hungry. Breakfast and hot tea cured two of those ailments and as for the tiredness: what early morning pick-me-up is there better than having a huge, unstoppable, top of the food chain killing machine tear up chunks of meat just a few inches from your face?After downing a hearty breakfast at the HQ of 'Apex Predator', one of the many shark dive companies in South Africa, we headed out onto the boat and sped towards the dive spot in some rather choppy conditions that flung the vessel around like a roller-coaster. We were soon there and so the process of 'chumming began' which involved spilling ground up tuna into the water in order to attract the attention of any nearby sharks. The anticipation was exciting for me since it's pretty much been a lifelong dream to dive with these creatures. I've been fascinated by great whites for most of my life. Most little kids have had a teddy bear at one point in their life, I had a fluffy great white shark. Most people fear this shark and yet I did think, and still do think that they are amazing, beautiful, graceful and awe inspiring creatures. Hell when I was kid I genuinely, honestly thought they were cute and cuddly. Seriously I really did. And maybe I still do to a certain extent; So this encounter was set to be the high point of a lifelong fascination with these amazing beasts.
At first we weren't having any luck but another boat nearby was having a great time with several large sharks and they were nearly finished and ready to go back to port. We moseyed on over to their spot once they had left and took over. The sharks were still circling the previous boats' chum slick so we weighed anchor, lowered the cage and prepared for our 'dive'. I should point out at this time that the word 'dive' is a bit of a misnomer. Most shark dive companies simply provide wetsuits, a mask and a snorkel instead of full scuba gear. Oh and a cage hopefully. It our case we didn't even use snorkels, we simply needed to hold our breath and stick our heads under the water. We got suited up and descended into the cage and thus began the process of baiting the shark with the large tuna steaks on a rope that one of the dive-master used.The dive master would throw out the line and trail it so that the bait was inches away from the cage. When he saw the shark approach he would shout out where to look and we would hold our breath and duck our heads under the water. It wasn't long before we were treated to an amazing show. At first the shark would just approach the bait and the cage, turning away at the last second, though still getting incredibly close. But then the show got much more spectacular. The shark would charge at the bait, sometimes from the side where we got an optimum view, sometimes from below so we could stick our heads back out of the water and watch the shark's massive head rise up from the surface an plunge back into the murky depths, and sometimes the monster would charge right at the cage, snapping violently at the bait just an inch or two away from our faces. Other viewers recoiled in horror when the latter happened, I couldn't get close enough. I would have reached out and patted the shark if it wasn't against the rules.
At one point the shark even managed to successfully catch the bait as it passed close by the cage. As it grabbed the tuna steaks it thrashed around wildly, crashing with tremendous strength against the side of the cage with the full force of its entire body. Fortunately the whole thing was captured on DVD by the videographer so we managed to get some amazing footage of the experience. We returned to dry land, now fully awake and we rejoined Greg and Chris, who for some strange reason didn't feel like putting a flimsy little steel cage between themselves and the top predator in any of the worlds' oceans, and we resumed our journey, heading further east away from Cape Town along the coast, the spectacular 'Garden Route'
Nice bridge, lets hurl ourselves off it
The plan was to get as far along the coast as possible then spend the night somewhere and do the bungee the next morning. We found a pleasant little coastal town to stay in called Mossel Bay which had one of the most unusual hostels I've ever stayed in, it was a decommissioned train right next to the beach. Single 'rooms' (i.e. sleeper train compartments) were a bargain so we grabbed a single each and enjoyed our first actual night of good sleep since reaching Cape Town, since the Cape Town hostel, lovely though it may have been, was a party place where the noise didn't really stop all bloody night. When we arrived at the bungee jump site it was still wet and overcast, as it had been the day before, but the jump was still operating so we didn't care. I had seriously contemplated doing the jump in my underwear just for a laugh but it was cold and wet so I reluctantly went fully clothed. Phil and Sean also jumped but the rest opted out. Phil also went for a second jump, backwards no less, if only I'd known they would let you do that because I'd have gone for a second jump. No sooner had we completed the jump and picked up our photos we hopped back in the cars and headed back in the direction of cape town. At first I felt almost bad for Chris and Greg who were doing all the driving and none of the actual activities we had come to do but they were perfectly happy to enjoy the freedom of the open road and just enjoy the drive.That night we decided to drive to and stay at Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of Africa. After all we had started from the top, why not go all the way to the bottom. Oh and I'll slap anybody who points out that the northernmost point is actually in Tunisia where we didn't go. We found a fantastic little hostel and treated ourselves to a fry-up, including ostrich burgers and ostrich sausages. You just can't beat a good fry up, in fact it was so good we did it twice; after heading own to the ocean at the very tip of Africa we returned to the hostel and had a fry-up for breakfast as well. Good times.
Returning to Cape Town in the early afternoon it was time to put our guard up again and make sure to not venture out with anything valuable.
The African Trails Reunion: Part 2
The day after returning to Cape Town we had our second reunion, this time German and Carolina had turned up after a great time in South Africa in our absence and Lena had returned, successful in her mission to both get some rafting done in Victoria Falls and to be reunited with Crag, who was also present. Even though they'd split up. Apparently. Don't ask. Not only that but we had our final reunion with the Oasis Crew as they arrived in Cape Town. It seemed that most of the oasis lot were at the end of their journey and most were jumping off in Cape Town to allow more on. We on the other hand only lost a small handful of people: Chris & Lucy and PS1&2, AKA Gav and Mike. Our favourite, Mayumi, had sadly already left right after we reached Cape Town, making us wonder who was going to cheer us up when things were bad. Oh and Martin, who I didn't really get to know that well. Still, despite the fact that we were sad to see them go there was still one good thing: we now only had two duplicate names on board the truck which made things a little easier. Two Dans and two Petes. And We always seem to refer to the two Petes by their shortened last names anyway (Toms & Mac).Meet the FNGs
I'll tell you what the N and the G stands for in FNG, New and Guy, but I'll leave the rest up to your imagination. We had already met one of our new joiners during our week in Cape Town, Emma, the others we wouldn't actually meet until just the night before we left. Of course most of the others already on the truck were taking delight in winding up some of the newbies with some of the horror stories about how we would be drinking stagnant puddle water and not showering for days like we had done before, neglecting of course to point out that that sort of thing was far more likely to happen in West Africa deep in the depths of the DRC and Angola, not on the 'Milk Run'
The next day we set off towards Botswana, back on the truck with the new joiners, some of us almost having forgotten what it was like to sleep in a tent, though we knew we would soon be quickly reminded.
And so on to Part 3: Cape Town to Nairobi
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