South Africa

Cape Town rocks!
This place was so amazing, the sights and experiences are out of this world. On the first day I went to the shopping center near the ship, which made me realize that South Africa was the same as any big city in the US, literally identical in the wealthy areas. It was a nice shot of home between Ghana and India. For me it was an extreme activities port. I woke up early on day two and traveled two hours to go diving with great white sharks. It was the coolest thing ever!!!! We got on the boat and went out over the crashing surf, for about 20 minuets we just chummed the water putting in pieces of tuna and ground up fish for the scent. Then we saw our first shark only about 5 ft. long. By the time I was in the cage we had five sharks taking turns swimming around the boat, the largest two were about 12ft long. Massive massive animals, and they moved so gracefully and attacked so efficiently there is no doubt why these sharks are kings of the oceans. I had my underwater video camera with me so I got some pretty awesome footage, you will all have to see it because you would not believe how big they are and how close they came, one nearly bit the cage. After diving I continued my adventure quest by climbing up Table Mountain, it is a very tall mountain that creates the bowl between itself and the ocean that Cape Town sits in. Me and a friend, Adam, hiked up early in the morning (the rule is that you don't sleep in port). It was amazing to see the clouds move in beneath you, the view from the top was breathtaking. It is unlike any mountain I have been on because it is straight down on all sides, sheer rock faces everywhere, (we climbed up a gorge), which makes it ideal for abseiling, which we did. This means that we repelled down 324 ft. of the mountain. It was terrifying. Honestly more nerve racking then sharks. I have video of this too to prove it. The lack of a safety briefing was even more terrifying and then when we were a third of the way down they told us there was a surprise half way down, which really didn't make me feel to good. Turns out that the surprise was that the rock face cuts back and you have to hang in the air the rest of the way down as you slowly lower yourself. It was so cool, the view was amazing and my heart never stopped racing. The repelling only took us about half way down the mountain and so we had to climb back up to get the cable car down all the way. The hike up was even more terrifying then the repel down because we had no more harness. This trail (if you could call it that) is the most dangerous, killing more people then Everest. It is suggested only for experienced climbers, and the only other person we saw on it had a helmet and rock climbing gear... There were sheer rock faces inches from my feet. The path was only about three feet across between a rock wall and a 1000 ft drop. At times there was absolutely no path and we were pulling ourselves up and over boulders on the edge of a mountain. Needless to say I was thrilled when I made it to the top, and it was the coolest thing I had done... up until the Safari. That is for a later post. take care.