Monday 31st January
2010
Umkomaas, south of Durban
After travelling from Pretoria last Friday through canefields,
maize and ramshackle villages with kids on their way home from school walking
by the roadside for endless Kms we hit the coast! Highway 3 was getting too heavy with shipping
transport heading for Durban and daredevil motorcyclists slicing between us and
trucks at 200Kph!!...so we were GLAD to head off on the less travelled tracks
to Umkomaas which is well known for scuba diving especially with the tiger sharks. Fortunately the tiger sharks are not around
much.
We’ve had 2 dives so far.
This morning was in beautiful conditions – sunny, calm seas and good
visibility. There were lots of the
colourful clown fish, John Dories, porcupine fish and a couple of moray eels
snoozing under a ledge. Also 4 stingrays
which we avoided and a couple of big turtles.
Yesterday we dived a km south of this reef at “The castle” where we saw
a ragged tooth shark. The rule is to
stay clear so we were happy to be about 3-5 m back with our dive master
watching carefully between us and it!!!!
It’s a worry when you’re so close you can see the remains of the last
meal between his teeth! …well at least the ragged edges, anyway…the upside is
that we think it was a Collingwood player
judging by the remains of the jersey!
The next plan after 2 nights more here is to travel through
Durban to Sodwana Bay approx. 5 hours north to stay 3 nights and do some more
diving and relaxing. Then it’s on to
Botswana to see friends in Gaborone and on to Maun with a stop on the way at a
game reserve in the Kalahari.
