Kleinbaai - my next new home!!

On Saturday morning, I flew to Cape Town and spent a great day there! I was collected at the airport and taken to a B&B called Sassveld Lodge which was a whopping £15 a night including breakfast!! I spent the afternoon mooching around the area and in the evning, I met up with a friend, Louise, who had also arrived in Cape Town that day!! We met at the Waterfront, which is the trendy harbour area full of shops and restaurants. We spent a very fun evening catching up and boring Louise's friend ridig with diving tales!!

This morning, I was picked up from the B&B by the White Shark Project bus and there were 2 other new volunteers on the bus, Jason and Lizzie. There were also 4 people going there for an afternoon's cage diving. The White Shark Project is one of about 7 cage diving operations in the Gansbaai area (about 2 hours drive south-east of Cape Town). It's actually based in Kleinbaai, about 5 mins drive from Gansbaai, and right next to the sea!!

There were 5 other volunteers here but 4 of them were leaving today so there are 4 of us left. Claudia is the remaining volunteer and she is here for another week. This afternoon, they let us newbies act as clients on the boat :-) The Great Whites feed close into the shore here and it';s only a 15 min boat ride to get to the area they are in. The operations are highly regulated - the boats are only allowed to anchor in certain areas and only use certain types of chum and bait to get the sharks in close to the boat.

The volunteers work on the boat with the crews helping with everything from preparing the boat for the clients, helping clients in and out of wetsuits, anchoring, preparing the cage, chumming etc.

Today, we saw 4 Great Whites!!!!! They are beautiful :-) They are drawn in by the chum and then the bait is used to draw them closer to the boat and the cage. The volunteers make notes about the sharks' behaviour and appearance and there is a resident marine biologist whoc takes pictures of the sharks. Us newbies didn't go into the cage today but we will have plenty of chances.

So now we are in our volunteer house eating pizza and getting to know each other. So far, I am really enjoying this place!!