Cape Town 9th-14th August

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After the excitement of the last ten days in Kruger it was time to chill out and recuperate in Cape Town before heading up to Entebbe to join up with our forth coming geckos tour of Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania. We arrived in cape town on the evening of the , after catching a flight from Hoedspruit to Jo'berg and then Jo'berg to Cape Town. We'd arranged to stay at the Big Blue Youth Hostel for our four nights in Cape Town and they were ready and waiting for us at the airport which was good to see. The hostel was excellently run with good sized rooms and located not five minutes walk from the waterfront which is where all the shops and restaurants are, overlooking the marina. There is a bar, communal television area, kitchen and dinning area and the staff are keen to help you sort out any type of day trip or activity you could wish for. Our room was pretty huge with an extremely comfy double bed, sofa, coffee table and large bathroom with bath, though no shower. They even put chocolates on the pillows, something we've never experienced in a hostel before!! That evening we headed down to the Victoria Warf shopping centre on the waterfront to experience some modern luxuries that we’d been missing: we had dinner at Spur and then watched the most recent Harry Potter movie at the cinema. The cinema was very nice and modern with quite a large number of screens which are small compared to back home, but not crowded. The popcorn was pretty odd, you buy plain popcorn and then use shakers of different topppings to flavour it. They had weird things like sour cream and chives and salt and vinegar which we found rather odd and definitely not as good as the usual salt or sweet! After this we grabbed a cab back to the hostel which we both found made us feel a little vulnerable as we'd heard quite a lot of bad things about Cape Town, but we made it back safe and sound.

The following day we spent pretty much solely on the internet sorting out the blog and getting caught up with e-mails and the news. We did this at a slightly over-priced cafe in the Victoria Warf shopping centre and only stopped at dinner time when we headed to a very nice little Indian that looked out over the waterfront and served true India food (the kind we had in India, not back in England). After dinner we headed to the cinema, but this time watched a film called the Vacancy, about a couple who end up at a motel for the night where the motel owner wants to torture/kill them - such a nice topic and unsuprisingly we were both a little freaked out again on the cab ride back to the motel and didn't sleep too easy that night! Serves us right really!

The next day we headed down to the waterfront again and spent the morning on the internet tidying up our blog entry before we attempted to go sightseeing. Unfortunately everything was against us; we tried to get the boat to Robben Island but it wasn't running because the swell was to big, Table Mountain was covered in cloud and we didn't fancy walking around markets/town in the rain. So we ended up taking a stroll around the very fancy mall and waterfront/dock area where there were so many clothes shops and gift shops that Dan almost had to restrain me! The waterfront is really modern and a very nice area; clean and tidy and feels safe too. We had a late lunch at Spur and then headed to a pub just around the corner to watch some football game that Dan was interested in. We spent most of the afternoon in there relaxing and strange enough met some chap who lives in Windsor (just down the road from us) and who even knew someone Dan used to work with! What a small world! I managed to drag Dan away from the pub in the early evening and we again headed to the cinema. This time we watched Bourne Ultimatum, which we both thought was excellent and we weren't worried at all on the cab ride home! We had a pretty early night after the cinema because we had to be up at 4.30am the following morning to go Great White Cage Diving!!!!!

So the next morning was an extremely early start and it certainly felt like it! After a quick shower to wake ourselves up, we were picked up by the tour guide and started the two hour journey to get to the house/cottage place where we met up with the whole group and had a very nice little breakfast of toast, fruit, yoghurt and scone things. After this and a quick briefing we got back in the vans and drove for another half an hour before arriving at the dock. Here we changed from the vans to a boat. There were about 30 of us all together on board and luckily Dan and I managed to get a spot on top deck at the front of the boat. We'd prepared ourselves for sea-sickness by taking some tablets that morning but really there wasn't anything that could have prepared us for the sea-sickness we were going to feel that day!

It took about 45 minutes for the boat to get to Shark Alley where we dropped anchor with about another half a dozen boats. The journey had been very pleasant with beautiful scenery of the coast and we even saw some Southern Right whales, some Humpbacks and some sealions! Shark Alley is the area you usually see on T.V where they show Great Whites breaching out of the water and playing with the sealions. The coast around this area is just one huge sealion colony so it's a perfect place for finding Great Whites.

Now they started throwing out the bait to lure the sharks in. They only throw out chunks of tuna because it is something that the sharks would normally eat. They also only throw it out on a line and drag it back in again because they don't want to actually feed them otherwise the sharks will begin to rely solely on the boats for food. This was when things began to go a little down hill. There was a pretty large swell out there even though it didn't really look too bad and the boat was bobbing around all over the place. I was feeling rough and even Dan who says he's never been seasick before was feeling pretty bad too but we were lucky compared to the rest of the group. There were only about 5 of us, Dan and I included, who weren't physically sick - we were surrounded by them and it was not a pretty sight, or sound!!

After about an hour the first Great White arrived. It was so amazing to finally see one of these massive impressive creatures first hand; something you'd always feared, and there it was just circling around the boat, right on the surface so that you could see every detail and it was HUGE! Their heads aren't particularly big but they are super stocky and yet amazingly graceful.

Once this guy appeared they started getting people into the cage. The cage was about 2m long and could fit 6 people in it at a time. It was situated right next to the boat so that you climbed in from the boat and then they closed the lid over you. As long as the cage isn't bumping around too much then it's safe, if it is, then you've got to be careful not to fall in between the boat and the cage or just miss the cage completely. Each group would stay in the cage for about 20 minutes and then they'd get the next group in as they didn't want the shark to leave before all groups got to see it. They can't promise that you'll see even one and if you do, they can't promise how long it will hang around. If the shark/s hang around for a while then you can always go back in again and have a second look.

We didn't use diving equipment or even snorkles, all we were equipped with was a 7mm wetsuit, a weight belt and a mask. There is a gap between the top of the water and the top of the cage so that you keep your head above the water until the crew shouts shark and then you hold your breath and go under to watch it.

After the 2nd or 3rd group, it was our turn. Unfortunately all the wetsuits had been used and were wet so we had to struggle to get them on will trying our hardest to keep our eyes on the horizon and not be sick! My biggest worry for the day had been getting into the cold water which was actually only about 15degrees C so not too bad and the wetsuits did a brilliant job at keeping us warm. The worst thing in fact ended up being the sea-sickness!!

After climbing in the cage and getting ourselves settled we just had to wait for the sharks, and not let our feet or hands drift between the bars, actually harder than you'd think because the wetsuit made us pretty boyent, and try not to swallow the water that was filled with chunks of tuna and people's breakfast. Seeing our first shark underwater was just amazing. The guys on deck would see it first so we'd go underwater and wait and then it would come gliding out of the murky water as if it appeared from nowhere, exactly like how you see them in the movies. They'd come right up to the cage, swim past, swim under you, one gave Dan a look, some even tried to bite the cage and one guy almost lost his hand! They were just SO massive; this experience has made me realise what beautiful and amazing creatures they are but it has not made me fear them any less. They are just so curious and I don't doubt that if they saw you in the water, they would bite you just to see what you were. And I don't think even Dan could fight one of these guys off if he took a shine to him! (I could actually...I'd have his eyes out!)

After we'd had our turn we changed back into our clothes as quickly as possible and headed back to the top deck. Once there, we began to feel a little less ill and were definitely ready for the journey back. After everyone had had their turn we headed back to shore; we'd been out there for about 4 hours. All in all we saw about 6 sharks, the largest being about 4m in length. This chap also had a massive bite mark on his side from another Great White which shows that there were even bigger ones out there!!

Back on shore we had a very nice late lunch of vegetable soup at the same place we'd had breakfast, watched the DVD of the day made by some guy who'd been on board with us and then headed back to our hostel where we ordered pizza and then headed to bed.

The following day, our last in Cape Town, we again headed down to the Warf after a little lay in. We tried to catch a boat to Robben Island but this time all the tickets were sold out. Table Top Mountain was still clouded over and getting a taxi to Boulders to see the penguins was just WAY too expensive, so we decided that a day of relaxation was in order and thought that'd we'd enjoy the luxuries that the shopping mall had before we headed off to Easten Africa!

We wandered around some curio shops looking for presents, and then decided that we couldn't really carry them at the moment anyway, so grabbed a bite to eat at a very good fish and chips shop on the dock. Dan swore these were the best fish and chips he'd had since we left home and were some of the best he'd ever had in his life! I personally wasn't that fussed but I did only have chips. Guess what we did next......yep you got it....we headed to the cinema and spent the rest of the day there watching Shrek 3, Die Hard 4 and Transformers! (we hadn't been to the cinema for AGES before we arrived in Cape Town and it's one of the things we miss from back home). We had another Indian for dinner, though this one was rather rushed as we just realised that we had to catch a very early flight the next morning!

The next morning we left the hostel around 4am and headed to the airport. We flew from Cape Town to Jo'berg, then Jo'berg to Nairobi where we had a lot of problems trying to get our bags onto our new flight. In the end we had to take them to the plane ourselves which was just a little odd and flew from Nairobi to Entebbe. We arrived in Entebbe in the early evening at a tiny airport that had only a visa desk and a luggage carosel. Still we got through there very quick and headed outside where there was a throng of people just waiting to get you into their taxi. It was all a little daunting especially as it was night but we quickly got a cab and arrived at out motel, Sophie's, 10 minutes later. A dollar a minute for the fare was a little much but we got there safely so that's all that matters.....

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