Day 15 - South Africa - Capetown - Sharks

And we are up before the sun today as we set out for the 2 hour drive to Gansbaai – hot zone for the great white shark. Thanks to Qu family for making today's main excursion possible!

Snapped a picture of the sunrise... it's not often we're up for it.


We got to the White House, the preparation building for the cage diving, and grabbed a quick breakfast. After a short tutorial about how to avoid getting eaten by the sharks, we headed to the boat.

Within minutes we were out on the water. Each boat on the water seemed to have it's own flock of gulls following it.

After the short ride to Shark Alley, the crew started "chumming". Basically, they throw out fish guts and what-not to put out a scent trail which the sharks are attracted by. Some people aren't really a fan of this practice (though you're unlikely to see a shark otherwise), because they don't know whether it changes the behavior of the sharks. No cage-diving operation is EVER allowed to give the sharks real food, since it's probably not a good idea for sharks to associate boats with food. The cage-diving operation was quick to stress that these sharks only pass through Shark Alley, and there are only rarely repeat sharks. The way I figure it, any eco-tourism operation that puts the human in the cage rather than the animal is a step up. Within minutes, the first shark swam by.
The little seal decoy draws the sharks close to the cage. They also use a gigantic fish head as bait.


Cage diving isn't nearly as scary as it sounds. The cage is next to the boat the entire time, and you're not wearing scuba gear or anything (the sharks don't like the bubbles). Just a snorkel mask and a wetsuit. As long as all your body parts stay inside the cage you're safe.


We probably saw 5 or 6 different sharks over the course of a couple of hours. They are surprisingly slow on the attack... but then again, I guess they don't have to be very fast because their pray is probably not paying attention to what's going on below the surface of the water.

Even the guy handling the fish head wasn't always quick enough on the line to keep the shark from taking a chunk of it (so much for not feeding the shark). Though they are huge, they have a knack for popping out of nowhere.


Pretty impressive animals.

Ming and I went in the cage together for about 10 minutes. The most shocking part of the experience was the cold, cold water. After a while, though, the thin layer of ice cold water trapped next to me by the wetsuit warmed up, and all was well. The crew would shout "DOWN" every time a shark swam by the cage. A snorkel would have been nice, so that we didn't have to keep coming up for air, but then again, coming up after a close encounter added to the experience because all five people in the cage would say things like "woah, did you see that!" It was pretty amazing watching these gigantic fish swim by us. One or two even knocked the cage a little while chasing after the bait.Once we got out we watched the sharks for another hour from the surface before making our way back to land. On the ride back we swung through the shark's "drive-thru" dining area:

So many seals. It's a wonder the sharks don't stay here all year round and feast. In any case, it was time for us to leave, as we wanted to get back before the cable car to table mountain closed. Yeah... apparently you can hike it too, but it's hard to resist the comfort of a cable car. That is, until you realize that it's taking you on a tour of the clouds rather than of the mountain and surrounding vistas:
Once at the top, it was mostly a gray haze.
But every once in a while, the clouds would part, and you could see the ocean... or even a faint hint of Robben Island in the distance.

On the plus side, we finally got our "end-of-the-earth" shot:

From the cable car, we rushed back to our honeymoon suite at 30 Fiskaal to catch the sunset from our balcony.
The sun set around 6:30, by which point we were starving. We drove into town to try out "The Africa Cafe." It turns out that The Africa Cafe is more of and experience than just a place to get grub. All the waiters and waitresses wear face-paint... which they then put on you:

There is a set menu with about 20 different dishes on it.


They bring you 3 or 4 dishes at once. Then they ask you which ones were your favorites, and you can order more of those dishes in particular.
To top it all off, the service staff also double as singers/dancers. Every once in a while they dance from room to room singing African songs.
After stuffing ourselves, we headed back to the guesthouse.

Day 14 - South Africa - Capetown

Plan for today: Peninsula drive! After a nice breakfast, we take off for the eastern coast of the cape peninsula. As we're cruising along (which, by the way, I was pretty impressed by...Ian's ability to get into the left-side driving so quickly), we realize that we're passing through the Cape winelands of Constantia...detour time!

First we stop at Klein Constantia... mainly because I'd heard nice things about their dessert wine – it is centuries old and was once the favored drink of Napoleon and the French kings! Plus, it didn't hurt that the tasting was free. We worked our way through their offerings, but decided not to buy anything. The man doing the tasting mentioned towards the end that he had to hurry off to a meeting so we decided to move along as well.

It was getting to be around lunchtime soon, and we were in the area of La Colombe – supposedly the best restaurant in all of Africa (or so says the in-flight magazines!), so we head over to Constantia Uitsig, the winery where La Colombe is located. As we walk into the tasting room there...lo and behold! It's the man from our tasting at Klein...and he's sitting at the table with 8 glasses in front of him.


Apparently, we've crashed an inter-winery arranged tasting... so we are in for an hour of high-quality tastings accompanied by five winery pourers who are constantly discussing the pros and cons of each pour. The Klein employee is the guy in the front right.


Ok, so maybe some of the talk seemed a bit pretentious... but I didn't care – the wine was tremendous!

We got to taste multiple years of each variety so that we could see how much the weather for each season affects the taste – even when it's the same exact combination of grapes. Now I can see why people talk about liking particular years of wines – they really do taste very different! Note for wine drinkers -- 2007 was a particularly good year for Sauvignon Blancs in South Africa!

After all that wine tasting, we were definitely ready for our food.


Maybe the wine helped...but I thought our meal at La Colombe was the best one of the entire trip. They have a daily menu that they have to carry around to each table...good thing it's a small restaurant!



We started with a Truffled Egg with Fois Gras, and then I had an amazing Quail and Langoustine starter and a Risotto while Ian had fillet of Springbok. Total bill with wine, tax, and tip? Under $100 – I wish there was a La Colombe in Boston!

Now that we've gorged ourselves, it's time to begin the peninsula drive in earnest. First stop: Kalk Bay – paradise for surfers.

The pictures don't do the waves justice.


Though the day was a little cloudy, the sun still managed to peak through enough for some nice coastline pictures.



Next up, picturesque Simonstown – colonial structures, white sand, blue waters...



...and the resident penguin colony!






We caught them in the beginning of spring, so a lot of them were just beginning to lose their winter coats.



Next, we were ready to head to Cape Point...as we were driving...I had my shining moment of the trip: I spotted a whale.



We never quite got that tail in the air classic shot, but watching him play in the water was still pretty cool!



Sadly, however, our visit with the whale meant we had missed the park closing time for Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope – I guess we'll have to do the drive again another day! And so another day comes to an end...must get to bed early – wake up call at 5AM for shark diving!

Day 13: Capetown

After a quick breakfast at the guest house, we back to the waterfront, but walked inland a bit until we hit this market just in front of the clock tower. Ming has a special kind of radar that seeks out markets and trinket shopping regardless of where we are.

We bought a pair of gloves (it was a little chilly), and then headed toward the District 6 museum. The museum tries to tell the story of life in District 6 before the apartheid regime forced all of the black and coloured people out of the city center and into the surrounding townships. Within a short period, the former residents lost their entire communities and their everyday way of living. It's just one highlighted example of the injustices of the apartheid regime.

From there it was over to the Pan-African market for more shopping. The Pan-African market collects more than 30 vendors with hand-crafted goods from all over Africa. (Ian was kind of complaining the entire time...but that didn't stop him from picking out some stuff as well!)

I'm sorry to report that we completely failed on the bargaining. We didn't realize it was a bargain place at first...but then halfway through the visit we saw these cool bone-carved salt and pepper shakers being offered for 120...and eventually he sold them to us for 40. Hmm...I guess Chinese-style "go for 25% of the quoted price" continues!

It was a nice clear day, so we finally got our first full view of table mountain.

When we got to the cable car that takes you up, however, we found out it was closed due to “gale-force” winds. Fortunately, the cable car is only a 5 minute drive from the guesthouse so we had plenty more chances to catch the cablecar experience. Even the view from the ground is amazing.

It started clouding over late in the day.

But the sky over the town was almost cloudless. (Ian was very proud of himself for climbing on top of that rock there in the picture and tried to get me to stand on top of a pole so that I could get a better shot of him...thank goodness for the tiltable screen on the camera!)

South Africa's weather this time of year can best be described as: undecided. We were pooped after the day of walking around, so we decided to stay in for the evening. Tomorrow -- time for a drive around the peninsula!

Day 12: Winelands & Cape Town

With 4 wineries under our belt we slept in late and once we finally woke up, we decided to leave Franschhoek a little early. Before leaving, though, we had a quick lunch at La Petite Firme. We took our wine outside, and enjoyed the view before heading off to Capetown.

30 Fiskaal, our Capetown guesthouse, was amazing. We got upgraded to the honeymoon suite.
It's low-season for tourism here, as the weather can be a bit finicky, so we were the only ones there. I wasn't complaining. As an example of how unpredictable the weather can be. Here's a shot that's got it all. It also happens to be the view from our suite's balcony. We also get a great look at Camps Bay.

From our lovely private balcony.


In the evening we decided to go for dinner on the Waterfront.

Admittedly, we weren't very adventurous with our restaurant choice: Wang Thai. For a chain Japanese/Thai restaurant in South Africa, it was actually quite good. After dinner, back to 30 Fiskaal and its amazing suite.