Swimming with the Great White Sharks Where Two Oceans Meet

Greg made an executive decision and boy were we glad he did. We were suppose to go sand boarding today and shark cage diving tomorrow, but he checked the weather and saw a storm coming in tomorrow so he set us up with shark cage diving today. Which was good because the seas were too rough for them to go out the next two days. If you are in Cape Town and have a sense of adventure, a stop in Shark Alley is worth it. We made the two hour drive down to Hermanus, setting yet another personal record, I was now further south then I have even been in my life. We were given breakfast and then briefed on what to expect while shark cage diving. What I did not expect was to climb up on to a boat that was sitting on a trailer that would then be lowered in to the sea with everyone already on board, wonder why they don't just use that dock over there.


The sea was very rough and I felt ill, much like many others on board. But much like many others on board I pushed through it, breathing deeply and staring at the horizon with Zen like concentration. There was one couple that needed to be rescued, and it only cost them an additional 400 RAND for an early ride to shore. This was the cage that up to five of us would be trapped in at any given time.


This is the cage with the first victims inside. The nice part is that it is attached to the boat so you don’t have to worry about things coming in from behind.


This is the fake seal that they use to bring the sharks in close to the cage.


This is the bait that serves the same purpose as the fake seal.


These are the birds that eat the chum that they bait the waters with.


And these are the sharks, who are mostly pissed to find things such as a fake seal and bait that gets pulled away from them as soon as they are close enough to eat it. This fish is big and not open to logic and reason, but beautiful to watch swim right by you, so calm, such grace. But on a moment’s notice ready to aggressively kill.


There is one guy pulling on the bait line and another guy up on top of the boat, however the sharks come up fast enough so that no one has enough time to react and sometimes the shark gets away with the bait.


We were lucky that when it was our time in the cage we saw three sharks in a very short period of time, something the other two groups waited over an hour for. I was really hoping for one to bite the cage, no such luck, but one did bump cage and moved us, and that was good enough for me. After the cage bump I learned something else about great white sharks, and that is that they seem unaffected by the presence of urine in the water.


After our shark adventure and ensuring we had all our fingers and toes we headed back, stopping at Two Oceans for lunch to watch the whales.


I think at this point using words such as “most amazing experience…”, “how fortunate am I…”, and “this is so cool…” have all lost meaning and are just implied. So I’ll just say that here I am eating lunch looking out at whales cresting. If I look to the left I see the Indian Ocean, if I look to the right I see the Atlantic Ocean. OK, so how cool is it to stand in a single location and see two oceans meet, I feel very fortunate. I think I find the Indian Ocean more scenic, but then maybe that is because I’m sitting on the right side of the lunch table.








This guy seemed to pose just for the camera and then all of a sudden I remembered I too had a dog at home.




As we worked our way back to Cape Town we stopped to see the Jackass penguins, only found in South Africa. Why Jackass, not because they all pile in shopping carts and ride down the ravine like that TV show, but because the bray (or sound like) like donkeys.


They were everywhere.




I loved watching them walk. I had not bought any souvenirs yet and would have loved to bring one of these guys home, but none of them had a price tag, and when something is not marked that usually means it is very expensive.












After a change of clothes we went to dine at the African Café. This was a great place in terms of traditional food, however it was very touristy. While everything was traditional, many dishes where customized to our palette. But another amazing day and filling meal, with more South African wine, so we headed back to the guest house for rest.