Catchin' Some 'zeys OverSihs: Back to the sharks and beginning our roadtrip

So much to catch up on!

From Durban, we met up with a new friend we made who gave us a ride down to Scottburgh (pronounced Scottborough, crazy South Africans...), about 50km south of Durban. We dove with blacktip sharks (yes, sharks) the next morning with Blue Wilderness, which specializes in shark diving. One of their founders helped film the amazing footage in Blue Planet.

The process was boat out to the middle of the ocean, thrown some smelly chum (sardine parts and water) into the ocean in a barrel and wait for the sharks to come. We were hoping to see the massive tiger sharks (yes, the ones that are known to bite people), but didn't. Blacktips are mostly harmless to humans, though an BW intern found out the hard way a week ago (we learned after the dive). She apparently held out her underwater camera too far, and the electrical workings of a camera are similar to a heartbeat, which to a shark is like chocolate. Anyway, the shark went for the camera, taking a nip of her finger in the process. It was possible to just snorkel at the top with the sharks, but we chose to scuba for close to an hour, being surrounded completely by 15-25 of these graceful hunters. These sharks had no problem with personal space so would swim quite close to us from all directions. Our dive guide was so comfortable with this group that he would grab onto their dorsal fins for a short ride. (Though I don't have pictures of the underwater madness now, Tiff does so perhaps this part will be updated later with pictures)

The next day, we dove with these sharks again (more of them this time) and the BW interns. After breaking for lunch, we went back on the boat for a deeper dive, this time in the infamous Aliwal Shoal. It was the deepest dive I've ever done (around 100ft at the bottom) and it was strange and scary not being able to see the surface of the water. But the reef was fantastic with huge schools of goldies. I'm sad that we didn't spend a lot of time down there (more pressure means less volume of air).

The next portion of our trip has been a whirlwind as we're making our way down the coast from Durban to Cape Town. Sunday (game day!) we caught a ride into Durban and rented another car to drive down to Port St Johns, a hippie town on the north edge of the Wild Coast. We watched the final at our backpackers, Jungle Monkey. After 6 hours in the car, Tiff and I learned that we didn't want to deal with the local radio (as much as we love Waka Waka, there's only one station sometimes that plays English songs), so we stopped by Mthatha to buy an AUX cable. Nothing much to see in that town, but it's famous for the Nelson Mandela Museum and Madiba was born near Mthatha. Monday we made it down to East London, where it was sunny and gorgeous. I loved the hostel we stayed in, which had painted ocean murals and quaint cabins.