The Sharks and the Mountain

We arrived in Capetown on the train at 16:00 on Friday afternoon. The Capetown Station is a bustling place although not as load, dirty and interesting as Jo'burg's, we were able to walk out of the station, ask one of the ever present and friendly security guards the direction to our hotel and we were here within 5 minutes. The Fountains Hotel is central and a good quality hotel although the first room they gave us was right beside the lift well and looking onto a light well, the second one has a view, sunlight and is much better.


The Sharks

On our arrival we found a message from White Shark Ecoventures letting us know they would pick us up at 05:30 so we organised a 04:30 wake up call. There was a mix up and we got left behind so we joined a later trip (08:00). The 1 1/2 hour drive to Gambaii was interesting although the "luxury coach" turned out to be a Mercedes van with less leg room than a Jetstar plane and seats far less comfortable.


The trip out of the harbour to the viewing grounds was interesting; after we boarded the boat we were launched into the sea off the trailer, we then passed through a gap in the reef that was not much more than 15m wide into a 25 km/hr "sea breeze" and a 1 - 1.5m swell. As advised we took seasick pills before we left and boy am I glad we did. Those amongst us who didn't really suffered. On the way out we saw a Right Whale and her calf.



Even before we had completed dropping anchor a 2.5m Shark appeared. This started a pretty spectacular 2 hour interaction with 5 - 7 individual sharks ranging in size from 2.5 - 3.8m. Deidre did not go in the cage but viewed the action from the upper deck of the boat and probably got a much better view than I did (Barry is the one on the left of the photo holding on to the outside of the cage). The water was cold and the visibility about 1.5- 2m but the the experience of being in the water with such a large animal was very exciting particularly when they hit or attacked the cage. We have a good video but our photos aren't spectacular.















The Mountain.

To the shock of the Hotel staff we decided to walk up to the Lower Station of the Table Mountain Cable car. This is only a walk of 5 - 6 kms uphill in very warm temperatures but very interesting and pleasant. When we got there we queued firstly for tickets and then for the cable car for a total of 50 minutes. Each cable car takes 65 people and has a rotating floor so everybody get a view, quiet cool really. The cable car rises some 1650m above sea level and Deidre was quite nervous about the height and how we were going to get down. After spending some time looking around the top of the mountain and getting 360 degree views of Capetown, the coast line and the ocean we set off on our descent. We walked across the Western Table to the War Memorial and then down the very steep Platteklip Gorge, then skirted around the face of the mountain on the upper contour path and dropped down to the lower station.


The track was very good although the steps were big for Deidre and even I struggled on some of them. We walked about 15kms total and it took us about 3 hours to get from the top of the mountain back to our hotel, we were a little weary, stiff and footsore.