Blogs from Gansbaai, Western Cape, South Africa, Africa

Our Christmas holiday and time in Gansbaai was mainly spent with family, which was wonderful. It was windy most days, except one exceptionally hot day and a couple of mildly windy days. Typical strong cape wind that can last for a good few days, without stopping at all - that is why most trees in the cape don't grow upright. There was a severe fire just above Hermanus that caused some major destruction in its path and with the wind blowing constantly, it flared up near Gansbaai as well. It's always a scary sight and so difficult to control when there is so much wind. Fire-fighters had a difficult task to control the fire. Paul managed to go fishing on two occasions, the catch was small but plentiful, with our brother-in-law very skilfully cleaning and filleting ... read more

For once I am blogging in the present and not past blogs! It's December and the festive season is upon us. It is time for Christmas holidays and we are going to visit family and friends and spend some time in Gansbaai, territory of the Great White Shark. And NO, I am not going diving with them! First of all, I am a fair weather diver, so I won't be putting my foot in that cold water, let alone a limb or two that could become a tasty morsel for the shark. But you can dive in a cage, you will say. My reply: those cages look far too flimsy for me and I am not a fan of chumming to attract the sharks. (I must confess I do my own chumming, but that's another story....) ... read more

Well what can I say.......... Shark cage diving was an experience that we will definately never ever forget. It was epic! The day started off pretty calmly, we had the most incredible weather which is really lucky considering how terrible the weather has been in Cape town this last week. We were picked up about 9:00am and started the 2 hour drive out to Gansbaai which would have been fine except none of the 13 people on a 12 seater bus realised the diving was two hours away. Lets just say we all got to know each other extremely well in that 2 hours. Needless to say the drive was amazing, absolutely beautiful. It was quite surreal for me to be driving through towns like Somerset West and Hermanus which I have memories of, but are ... read more

Alright, I had been looking forward to visiting Cape Agulhas the entire trip. We were going there initially at the beginning of the trip, while visiting Cape Town a few weeks ago. But we didn't have time and figured we could go there after we knew that our path to the Final would start in Durban, go by Port Elizabeth and back to Cape Town for the semi-final. We got up early, got in the car and drove straight south towards Cape Agulhas. It took us about 45 minutes to get there and we basically had the place to ourselves. To be honest, there isn't much to see at the furthest southern point you can go in Africa. It's a coastline like any other, perhaps with a little more history, that has a little monument marking ... read more

Just outside of Cape Town you can go diving with the Great White Sharks. They lower a cage next to the boat and you drop yourself into the cage and the sharks swim right up to you and stare you in the face. They attract the sharks to the cage with fish blood and guts called Chum. They even put a large fish head on a rope and try to get the shark to lunge at the cage as they pull the fish towards your face. The cage is one foot square iron grids so the shark's nose even goes inside the cage a bit if the guy handling the fish head is good. If you put your hands or feet outside the cage even a few inches, the sharks can have a bit of you ... read more