South Africa: Cape Town baby.

Howzit?

So Cape town is amazing.

got up at quarter past stupid (4) yesterday morning to catch the 6.30 flight to Cape. Flight was only 2 hours and slept most of the way listening to a gervais podcast so was pretty shweet. Got on a little bus from the airport, on which we met a couple who used to go to leeds met (the obvious conversation followed).arrived at our hostel called Ashanti, which is immense compared to Tekwini: There are 10x more showers, all have hot water that doesnt run out

after 14 seconds, theres more than one staff member working, the beds have real mattresses, there are lockers under your bed, there are four computers with internet rather than one with a dial-up connection, the bar has a pool table that still has its cloth in-tact, the bar sells hot food for cheap, there is a pool rather than a puddle but most of all: every window you look out of you either see the beach or table mountain, which is incredible. (Didnt mean to sound moany about Tekwini cos i am actually fond of that s-hole, its got character) - (also, theres a toilet in Ashant

i that when you sit on it to do a big fat poo you can look out onto table mountain, deeeecent)

Talking of table mountain, (slick), we climbed it yesterday, took about 2 hours to reach the summit and you actually walk through cloud to get there. The view is immense, can see all the coast line and cape town itself (including their new stadium built for the world cup). When we reached the top, the cable cars were about to close because of high winds so ev

eryone apart from Ieuan, Danny and myself jumped on the cable cars...we walked back down. Was pretty cool, some good male bonding and Bear Grylls impressions jumping down the rocks. Got back, eventually, went to the shop to grab some food - i got a pizza toastie type thing, yummy. - everyone was pretty knackered when we got back so ate and played some games like 'would you rather' which got a bit sick, and 'killer' best card game ever where one person is a killer and everyone has to work out who it is but you can lie etc etc, ill explain fully another time.

Bed

Woke up at 4.30am (lay in compared to day before) to get on a bus...to go great white shark diving, booooom baby. Cost about 120 quid but it was absolutely amazing, one of the best things ive done. Was a 2 and a half hour journey to get there on a little bus, not comfy at all but managed to get some much needed podcast sleep. Arrived at the coast and had a nice little breakfast, continental mainly with some good coffee, before briefing. The staff wer

e really nice and knew what they were doing and they said that the weather was good and the visibility was around 10m. A lot of the time these shark dives get canceled due to shitty cape weather but we got lucky. We got given these maaaassive orange jackets to wear which as im sure you will agree look hot hot hot. onto the boat, nice and comfortable and bigger than all the other boats we passed so we could look nice and smug at them. Went to this little island where theres loads of seals and stopped. they do this thing called chumming (i think its chumming) where they bang out loads of fishy oil type stuff to attract the sharks, throw out half a big tuna,

and a decoy seal called Gladdis. So, we sat and waited, and about 10

minutes in a great white came and had a go at the bait. everyone was buzzing as you'd expect but it got better and better, a huge one came along and did a jumping attack on the decoy and i managed to get the snap of it. (little side note - i was the only one who got a good pic of it...and my camera cost 30 squids, you do the maths) They let 7 people at a time into the cage on the side of the boat and there were 28 on board, there were 6 of us in a group so we went last. All sorts of mental stuff happened, as

one girl was

getting in the cage a huge great white went mental at the tuna right next to the cage, his mouth wide open about a yard away from her, she nearly soiled herself.

Then it was our turn, so we got our wet-suits on, after a lot of help from the crew as they were already wet and tight (insert innuendo joke here). Laura was feeling pretty sick at this point from all the usual moving around so she went and vommed over the side of the b

oat before we got into the cage. Being in the cage was unbelievable, the visibility turned out to be 12 metres and you could see the bottom. We had three different great whites swim around the boat while we were down there, one of which was a massive male (they have two penii -plural for penis-) who was going mental at the bait and the decoy seal. at one point he went for the bait heading right toward the cage, missed it and head butted the cage right in front of me with his mouth wide open - i wasnt scared cos im hard...ok i was scared but only a bit.

When we had to get out they asked if there was anyone who wanted to get back in so i jumped straight back in there. Laura went and hurled again, then got back in as well...and

hurled again which was a lovely sight. The sharks were gettin aggressive now, coming right up to the cage and showing their teeth, headbutting all over the place. It was incredible.