Aside from all the amazing shark activities, we’re also
OCCASIONALLY allowed to have fun (we’re only allowed a maximum of three drinks
in the weekday evenings and have a 10.30pm curfew, as get breathalysed in the
harbour as they don’t get drunkards operate boats!). It was Friday (braei day),
where they chuck loads of yummy meat onto a big wood bbq, and everyone got
successfully trollied-woo hoo! This food was a serious shock to the system. Our
usual hotel food ranges from unknown congealed goop that they call macaroni
cheese (you can lift the entire slab with a fork, I hesitate to name it mac and
cheese since there really wasn’t any cheese in it), solid curried lentils, and
splasagne (some weird spaghetti lasagne, which didn’t really have meat in it,
just spaghetti, tomatoes and potatoes?). The bbq was LIFE CHANGING! You’d think
we would lose weight here with the war type rations we are presented with, but
since every meal usually has both pasta/rice and potatoes, it just doesn’t
happen- serious carb overload.
In our hungover state we crawled into a safari jeep to
cruise around Gondwana game reserve. The fresh air certainly woke us up. We
were told they had the big 5, but we’re not so sure! We did get to see lots of
Zebra (and have now changed the expression to-hung like a Zebra, with good
reason!!!!) and learnt why they have such bloated bellies- they have a LOT of
gas, smelt greattttt! We saw an elephant in the far distance, various different
antelope, and something exciting- 2 lions chasing Zebras. Unfortunately they
didn’t catch any but it was still cool. They walked about 3 metres away from our
jeep as well, it was incredible. Our tour guide also made us eat leaves
(something to do with them releasing a defence mechanism that makes them bitter
to stop animals eating them, really they just tasted like leaves), and
TERMITES! Live termites, they tasted like mint, apparently theyre full of
protein! Really our tour guide just wanted to see if we would eat anything he
put in front of us. We casually cruised around, and then stopped at 10am for
some WINE! Yes, wine on safari! And meatballs, very random, but very tasty! After
seeing nothing but antelope for 2 hours, we headed back for lunch, all
inclusive three course meal. Steak salad, venison (kudu and springbok! so
delicious) casserole and chocolate brownie. Unfortunately that was the last
good meal we’ll ever have. I’ve stocked up on Cadburys, it’s ok, I’ll live.
On Sunday I was very excited- it was my turn to bait during
our chumming trip. Basically, we want to identify the sharks by their dorsal
fin, so after attracting them with the smelly fish blood we chuck in the water,
I dangle a couple of tuna heads right in front of their nose, but try not to
let them eat it. The idea is to judge how fast the shark is going and drag it
accordingly, so it surfaces and we can photograph the dorsal. I was a bit
rubbish to begin with but got the hang of it, it was really incredible
basically guiding sharks around the bow of the boat, and having to quickly jerk
it out of the water as they suddenly jumped up and tried to grab it from the
depths. One cheeky shark did manage to eat half of the bait, we had a dry spell
for about 40 minutes, I took my eye off of it for about 3 seconds and suddenly
I was being jerked forwards over the bow of the boat! It really was
exhilarating. We were also convinced dolphins did not exist in Mossel bay-
every dolphin survey has been dry. At about 5pm, a swarm of bottlenose dolphins
appeared across the horizon and cruised past our boat. We counted between
70-100, they were so beautiful and we were all in awe. Dream come true.
Today it was aquarium duty, and we had to go find crabs
again to feed our hungry new Octopus! We managed to find one, I use the term “we”
loosely. A man came over and asked what we were doing, and he said you need an
Octopus to drive them out of the rocks. He grabbed one which I hadn’t even
noticed was 3 feet away, and plopped it into the rockpool and suddenly this
crab ran right into our bucket! He let us pick it up and it was very strong!
Very slimy and soft too. Then I saw the most upsetting thing I’ve seen in a
long time. A Chinese man who works for one of the Chinese restaurants in
Mosselbaai was catching Octopus’, and chucking them as hard as he could against
the rocks to kill them for the restaurant. It was absolutely horrific to watch
and hear, he did it to quite a few, I was in floods of tears but there was
nothing we could do, you can do this if you have a permit but by law they don’t
have to present the permit to anyone who isn’t the authorities. We retreated
very disgusted that this cruel inhumane activity is still allowed to happen in
what is now a modern country, helpless that there is absolutely nothing we can
do to stop it. It really made me think about how critical responsible,
sustainable fishing is. This about it peeps!
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