South Africa: Day 1 (Shark Cage Diving)

I wish I could explain to you all how beautiful South Africa is, but no amount of words I use could even begin to describe it. I’ve only been here for 14 hours and I’m in love. This is probably the one place we’ve been to so far that I’d consider moving back to….even despite the AIDS epidemic that is occurring within this country right now.

 

We began our morning spending time getting checked by customs and immigration officials and people’s parents from back home began to board the ship for the parent trip. Seeing all the parent’s greet their children made me slightly homesick but I didn’t have long to dwell on it as we were quickly beginning our drive to the Southernmost point of Africa to go cage diving with Great White Sharks!

 

We were running late because our van was pulled over, the other van got stuck in traffic, and we made a pit stop to use an ATM. So instead of heading to their office for a briefing first we hopped on the boat right away and had a quick 2 minute life jacket instruction. Then we headed out to where they dropped their bait earlier.

 

It was a 10 minute boat drive out to the cage where we immediately began seeing Great White Sharks. This alone was an amazing experience considering there are only about 1,000 of them left in the entire world. To make the occasion better, cage diving can only be done in South Africa or in California. Here we paid $120 versus the roughly $2,000 they charge in the states.

 

We were issued wetsuits which were probably the hardest things possible to get into…especially since they were already damp. Once the struggle was over, we took our turns in the water while continuously baiting the sharks. Under water in the cage we saw hundreds of fish and the BIGGEST sharks I have ever seen in my life. The smallest were probably 8 feet where the largest was nearly 15 feet!!

 

We headed back to shore where we were treated to hot vegetable soup and biscuits. We then bought souvenirs and headed back to Cape Town…stopping on the way to whale watch at the meeting of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.