Sept 30

Great white shark cage diving day begins.  We get picked up at 6:15 am from our hotel.  We travel 2 hrs by mini bus to Gansbaai then the fun begins. We are given breakfast on arrival and shown a DVD of what adventure awaits us.  I begin to get very nervous with the do's and don't and what can happen if you do this and that. We sign the waiver and off to the boat we go.  We travel about 15 mins to a place called shark alley.  They put out chum and tell us to wait.  And wait we did.  I thought maybe we weren't going to see any today but after about an hr our first shark arrived and boy was it exciting.  After about 15 mins it was apparent he was staying around so the first eight people got suited up and climbed into the cage and the excitement began.  They used gladys ( a seal cut out) to attract the sharks even closer to the boat.  As well they used bait which for the most part was right in front of me, which was good and bad.  It brought the sharks close but also was in front of me and probably in the way for most of my go pro shots.  The sharks were huge and from the boat we could see them coming from quite far away.  The crew would yell "down" and you would pull yourself under the water to see the shark.  We had wet suits on and weight belts.  It was important to lock your feet under the bar to hold you down.  I was having a hard time getting down there and was worried my feet were floating outside the cage.  The guy next to me kept telling me when they were.  I soon figured it out.   They came very close and some viewers even got a shark hitting their cage.  Underwater you can only see about 2 metres as the water is very murky from the last three days of storms.  But the experience was amazing.  We saw 11 sharks in all that day and the largest was 4 metres.  We also saw a few whales and a couple seals and lots of sea gulls of course. 

We returned back to Cape Town to meet up with our tour for our 6pm meet up.