Christmas and Shark diving

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Picking up from where I left off, we had just arrived back into Cape town where we slowly said our goodbyes to all the crew from our overland tour through Africa as we all went our separate ways. It worked out well that a few of the group were sticking around for a week or so which meant that we were able to spend bit more time with them.

Two of the guys from the trip were gay and our return to Cape Town happened to coincide with the gay pride event of the year called MCQP which stands for Mother City Queer Project. They sorted it so that 15 of us got tickets and the event was strictly fancy dress so the 4 of us picked up some pretty camp outfits and went as the Reservoir Fags. The night was a definite eye opener but a good laugh.

For Christmas week we rented an apartment on Long St which is the we spent the day with the tour crowd in the roasting heat at a pool party/BBQ in their apartment which was unusual but a good day. We then welcomed in Cinno who flew in for a couple weeks. We started by changing apartments to a great little space in Camps Bay which is the fancy pants part of town over looking the beach. Only hassle is that in order to get the place on the cheap they thought there was only a happy gay couple of Ben and Rowan staying there where as there was actually 5 of us in a 1 bed apartment. The owner of the place was an elderly lady so she either didn't see or hear us or else she was too scared to say anything. It all worked out well though.

For New Years we managed to bag free passes to a Miller street party in the city which was a good night. The next day we had a day to relax before renting a big 8 seater Mercedes van which we used to start our 10 day drive up the coast. We covered nearly 3500 km but we managed to see alot of cool stuff. We did a couple of days surfing which included a days lessons which was well needed.

Ro and Cinno also did the highest bungee jump in the world while the 3 of us tried to nurse a blow to our manhoods when we realised that we were all too much of a blouse to jump.

We also did a days cage diving with Great White Sharks which was awesome. On the morning of the dive a few people canceled which meant that our boat was only half full and so we were able to spend a good bit of time in the cage. The previous few days, they had only spotted the odd shark here and there but we managed to luck out and over the day we saw 7 sharks. The visibility wasn't great and so you could only see the sharks from up close but it almost made it better as you didn't know where the shark was coming from and before you know it your face was 6 inches from the teeth of a 10 foot great white! On the way back to Cape Town we also made a stop off at the southern most tip of Africa where we improved our near professional Frisbee skills.

Cinno has just left today with a couple of new tattoos and we Ben, Craig and I are getting ready to head to Perth while Ro is sticking around in SA for a couple more weeks with Kate who arrives in a couple days.

Will update again soon.

Mark

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