With most of the stress from last week released, we've had some time to relax and to enjoy some of the many pleasures offered in South Africa the last few days. After having acquainted ourselves with the water yesterday, we decided we'd better ought to find out what was actually lurking underneath the surface today and go for one of the well-marketed white shark cage diving tours. We set off early this morning (again together with Agatha) and drove about 30 minutes to Gansbaai, where breakfast and a fast boat were waiting for us and nine other excited participants. The ocean was completely calm and clear blue, with an amazing visibility. After about a ten minutes ride on the boat, we stopped in the middle of the bay and the preparations of trying to attract the sharks by throwing mashed up tuna remains into the water began. Soon, four sharks were circling the boat, smelling the prey. Meanwhile, we had gotten ourselves into wet-suits and goggles, a task neither very easy nor pleasurable as my legs were rather severely burnt after the kayaking yesterday (read "red like lobster tails") and the wet-suit two sizes too small. The cage, seen in the image below, wasn't very impressive nor assuring, but it did its job (we're still alive, both of us! :) ).



You couldn't really see much from the cage apart from a few meters in front of you, so we had to trust the shark spotting capabilities of the crew above us to tell us when hold our breaths and go down into the water. Most of the times, the sharks swam quietly by, showing up their big muscular bodies, three to five meters long and with a black and white coloring.



At some occasions they did show their jaws though, in attempt to grab the bait that floated in front of us. Once they even crashed into us, which got the cage shaking vividly and us into a state of petrified excitement. After maybe as much as an hour in the water (we just lost track of time!) we climbed back up on the boat, dried up, had a coke and some chips and turned back to shore. The rest of the day we just spent relaxing in the shade, doing some laundry and preparing for our Cape Town visit tomorrow. All in all a very pleasureable day!

-Tobbe.