weekend aquatic activities

this weekend was incredibly fun. it started thursday at a bar called "neighbourhood" where the program directors took everyone out for drinks. every thursday night is drinks night here somewhere around town.

friday night was the night of the stanley cup if i recall correctly. i got back from work after the ward rounds mentioned previously and went to a braii [braai?], which is basically a south african BBQ. it was at another intern's house, which was set up pretty much like a mansion.

we had some good food--it was stereotypically funny though. all the guys sat around the grill with beers grilling the food and the girls were inside listening to crappy music like spice girls and making the salad.

for some reason, at that point, i felt really old and manly. not in the sense like chuck norris manly, but you know...a grown man. it was really weird. i'm only 20.

anyway, afterwards, we all went to a club called zula and paid a ridiculous cover charge [R40 = only ~$5-6 but 40 makes it seem much more expensive]. there was a pretty good band playing but i wanted to get home and watch the stanley cup final. so me and my bud scott [who is a wings fan] left early and went home to set up the live internet stream...which as mentioned previously, cut out every 5 seconds. but we sucked it up and stayed up till 5 am to finish watching. passed out.

saturday:

saturday was a slow day. didn't do much...chilled at home and watched some movies. decided to crash early because we were going to go shark diving the next day really early at 6am

sunday: we woke up early to go, but i got a call from the skipper saying the weather conditions were too bad to go out...so they had to reschedule us for the next day. so instead, we decided to head out to muizenberg, which is a small town on the southern coast of south africa about an hour's train ride away. the train ticket was $1.50 roundtrip :]

we arrived in muizenberg, which is a nice quaint little town...and i got my first view of the indian ocean. it's gorgeous. we went to a surf shop, and got suited up into wet suits cuz the water was cold. i surfed for the first time! it was tough at first, but i managed to pick it up pretty quickly and by the end of the first hour, i was standing and riding those waves wooooo!

grabbed a late lunch and headed back to cape town, chilled at home again, had a few drinks w/ people and crashed early cuz we were going to go shark diving for REAL tomorrow.

monday: so this tuesday is youth day in south africa, which is a national holiday. i took off work so i could have a long weekend and also cuz we had to reschedule the shark diving. so, we got up at 8am this time and were picked up by the shark diving bus. met a group of ASU rugby players who were also going--that was cool.

the drive there was incredibly scenic and took about two hours. during the ride, they showed a documentary on a guy who swims with great whites OUTSIDE a cage regularly. also learned that you can put sharks in a catatonic state by flipping them over or touching their nose. this is called "tonic immobility." the flipping over really only works with smaller sharks though. this technique is important so you can extract blood from the sharks b/c sharks have extremely strong immune systems and we can extract antibodies and stuff from them.

anyway, we arrived at the diving place and got a quick briefing on what to do. we got on the boat, which was TINY. seriously, if a shark decided to jump on it or attack the sides, it would've capsized. anyway, the spot we dove into was about 65km or so i think off the coast. we headed south into the indian ocean and saw "the clubhouse" on the way----so named because back in the old days, they used to club seals there for their pelts LOLOLOL XD

so how shark cage diving works is you suit up in a wet suit and get into the cage. the skippers release bait (gutted tuna), a board that looks like the silhouette of a seal and some chum (gross ground-up fish and other crap) into the water. you get into the cage and the skippers will yell directions from which the sharks come from so you can see. the top of the cage isn't underwater so you have room to breathe. the water was pretty murky underwater.

about 5 great whites came to us throughout the dive, which lasted around 60-75 minutes. the biggest one that showed up was a 4m female (12-13 ft long)

one of them got a little angry i think and ended up ramming the cage with its tail. another got hold of the seal decoy board and almost ripped it to shreds. sweet.

got some sweet pictures from the boat, but pictures were hard underwater cuz the underwater camera was a cheap plastic polaroid and the visilbility was low.
it was absolutely incredible though how close we got to these sharks. we could've reached out and touched them if they'd let us. admist the chaos, it was strangely serene underwater staring face-to-face with the ocean's deadliest predator. it was also really cool just looking south and knowing that straight ahead would be antarctica :]

so monday night is over and tuesday is here. one more day to enjoy the weekend. the plan is to go surfing again in muizenberg and then hike table mountain, weather permitting. if not, i'll just go grocery shopping and relax and catch up on some work.

till next time...