South African Honeymoon

Click the map on the left to enlarge and see Cape Town, Simons Town and False Bay
(you can also click on any of the photos here to see larger versions of them - please use sparingly, since I have to pay for my bandwidth :-) )

Sunday/Monday, August 24 and 25:

Our flight left Nashville at 7:45 Sunday morning, headed to Dulles in D.C.
After about a 5 hour layover, we left Dulles at 5:40pm, starting our 16 hour flight to Johannesburg. For such a long flight, it really wasn't bad at all. It wasn't a very full flight and we convinced the lady in the terminal to give us our own center row in the plane, so we had 4 seats to ourselves to stretch out on. We stayed awake for the first 7 hours or so, then managed to sleep on and off for most of the rest of the flight. When we finally arrived in Johannesburg, we went through customs and got our baggage re-checked, then stopped in one of the airport bars to have a beer while we waited for our flight to Cape Town. After about 40 minutes we boarded and took the two hour flight southward, to finally arrive at our destination. The Cape Town airport was fairly hectic - they were in the process of building another terminal, because the city's tourist and business traffic seemed to have outgrown the airport in the last couple of years.
We landed and collected our bags, and walked down to the Hertz shop to pick up our car. The rep behind the counter sounded apologetic when she said "I'm afraid we're going to have to give you the Merc," and we looked at each other like "We're in South Africa, and they're going to give us a frikkin Mercury?!"
But it turned out to be a Mercedes A-Class - one of these guys:

It wasn't a bad little car to drive at all, and it was the perfect size to cram all our luggage into. The fun part, of course, was learning to drive on the left side of the road, with the steering wheel on the right side, and having to shift with your left hand. Thank god it was an automatic or I might have gotten us killed. Becca only had to remind me which side I was on a couple of times, so I thought I did pretty well.

At any rate, it was around 8:45pm when we checked into the hotel (Cape Town is 7 hours ahead of us, so after all the flying, when we actually got to the hotel it was 8:45pm on Monday, the day AFTER we left Nashville). The hotel is pretty nice - a clean, business-class hotel - and our room overlooks the canal in the Waterfront.
After unloading our bags, we headed downstairs to the hotel bar & grill, and had a drink to unwind from all the traveling.
Arrived in Cape Town around 7:40pm on Monday the 25th, and checked into The City Lodge at the V&A Waterfront. Checked in, settled into our room, then went downstairs and had a couple of drinks at the hotel bar to loosen up from the flight. It was an early night for us because we were tired and knew that we needed to get up the next morning for our shark viewing trip.

Tuesday, August 26

We had shark viewing trips scheduled for Tuesday & Wednesday mornings with African Shark Eco-Charters (In case you've ever watched MythBusters on television, this is the same company they used when they tested the (apparently true) myth that sharks seem to be scared of dolphins. They are a top-notch organization, and we couldn't be more assured of the safety of our trip than we will be with them.)

We scheduled for both days because we knew that weather was always a factor. It's a good thing we decided to do this, because this morning the weather was too bad to go out safely, so our trip was canceled. Fortunately, this left us with a free day to check out the area. The first thing we did was walk to a nearby beach, and we were surprised to see about 40 or 50 penguins playing around on the rocks. We didn't have the camera with us, so no pics of the penguins. (if you look at the large version of the Cape Town map above, you can see the "Pinguin-Kolonie" near Simon's Town, which is where we were)

We left Simon's Town and headed back to Cape Town, taking a different route than the way we had come. We walked around the Waterfront, had lunch at an old pub in town, then checked out the mall and shops. We thought about taking a ferry to Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned), but decided we didn't have enough time.
Then we came back to the hotel and took a nap. :-)

We ate dinner at the Cape Town Fish Market on one side of the shopping center. Becca had the seafood piaia and I had a surf and turf - a filet and lobster. We also had a calamari appetizer, a couple glasses of wine each and a tasty dessert. The food was all excellent. The surprising part was how cheap it all was. After getting the check, we crunched the exchange rate in our heads and decided that the whole meal only cost us about $50.
(When we got home and checked the credit card statement, it turns out we were wrong - it was only $35)
We went to bed fat and happy, ready to try the sharks again the next day.

Wednesday, August 27

We got to see sharks today!
We got up up at about 5:30 this morning to give ourselves plenty of time to make the 40 minute drive to Simonstown for our shark viewing trip. We had to catch the boat at 7:00 - you have to get out early in the morning to see the sharks breaching.
There were two reasons we wanted to go on the shark viewing trip: For one, we wanted to see great white sharks breaching. The southern tip of South Africa is one of the few areas in the world where they do this. Breaching is what happens when sharks pull surprise attacks on their prey - seals in this case. They'll start dozens of feet below the surface of the water, and when they spot their prey above, they will swim straight up towards it, at full speed - moving at speeds over 20 mph. Instead of circling the prey and just biting it, they follow completely through with it, and break the surface of the water. Most of the time, they are swimming so fast that their momentum hurls them completely out of the water - often times with the seal still in their mouth.

Unfortunately, my camera wasn't nearly quick enough to capture these amazing sights. Many of the sharks weigh well over a ton, and as soon as they leave the water, gravity jerks them back down, so they are out of the water for less than a second - from the time their nose breaks the surface to the time they are compeletly underwater again. In one of the pictures below, you'll see a splash and part of a fin - that is the closest I came to actually photographing a shark in mid-air, even though we saw them do it more than half a dozen times.

If you Click Here you can see some very good photographs of the breaching I'm talking about. These were taken by Chris Fallows. He's famous for his excellent photos - and not only does he take all of them in the exact same spot where we were watching them, but he was also out there the same day we were, in another boat. I've actually emailed him to see if he has any photos that were taken the day that we were there - if so, we definitely want to buy prints.

The other part of the trip that we were looking forward to was cage-diving. We were planning to get in a two man cage to see great whites up close and in their natural habitat. This bit of the outing wasn't as successful.

Looking back at the coastline of Simon's Town on our way out to Seal Island:

Getting closer to the island, we start to see seals porpoising and swimming toward their safe haven:

A few more seals here and there...

When we got close to the island we were amazed at the sight of it. This island in the middle of False Bay is home to 40,000 to 50,000 Cape Fur Seals, and it is just covered with them:

More seal pictures:

I was really disappointed with my camera when we were viewing the sharks today. We saw at least a half dozen large great whites fly out of the water, attacking seals from below. It's such an awesome and amazing (and humbling) sight. But thanks to gravity, they are out of the water for less than a second - if you blink you will miss them. My little Canon digital camera was just not fast enough to catch them on film: I clicked, but by the time the shutter actually snapped, they were gone. This first picture is the closest I ever got to capturing it - a splash and a fin.
Hey, at least I got something!
(more here and here

These next two are sharks feeding on seals as well, but these guys didn't fly out of the water. They just locked in on their prey and swam to them. You'd see them circle closer and closer, and then there would just be a violent swirl of red foam for a few seconds and it was over.
You don't realize how quickly they move, and how fast it's all over, until you can see it in person. A truly impressive sight that we'll never forget.