Fish Tales, Tall Sails and Jumping Whales

"Only two things are infinite; the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former"
- Albert Einstein


Reader Warning: The following text has been vetted by experts, who judged it to be nothing more than thinly disguised nonsense padding out an overlong anecdote about a fish. Readers of a sophisticated nature may wish to skip over this entry to something written by Cara.



Cara insists that Cape Town is her favourite city in the world. Personally, I find this very difficult to believe as she has visited Leyland on several occasions and had more than sufficient opportunity to change her mind. This was my second visit to the city and, whilst I do like Cape Town, I haven't formed the kind of attachment to it that Cara evidently has. By the way, Cape Town is so called because it is a large town situated on the Cape of Good Hope. Very imaginative.

After making it out of Cape Town airport, we made our way into the city centre to a hostel that had been recommended to us by Ashleigh and Philip from Bangkok. We usually prefer places that have been recommended by friends, as this nearly always reduces the amount of time required wandering the streets with our bags, checking different accommodation options. We seemed to strike it lucky on this occasion too, as the hostel was in a great location on Long Street (possibly so named because it is a street and it is quite long) and the room was clean and comfortable. Unfortunately, we had handed over cash and unpacked by the time we realised that the hostel was built atop several nightclubs and bars. The music thumping through the floor until 4am was so loud that the bed shook and I lost two fillings. Luckily, we had realised what would happen and sedated ourselves heavily at one of the bars prior to going to bed. That, coupled with the jetlag, allowed us to sleep through the furore, save for the odd occasion when a particularly heavy bassline would vibrate Cara's earplugs right out of her head and tip me onto the floor. On the one evening the music finished early, we discovered the girl in the next room was a bit of a screamer, so it still turned into a boisterous night. Despite the pounding bass and headboard, Carnival Court Hostel still turned out to be a great place to stay. Just don't expect much sleep.

Over the course of the next few days, we ploughed through the usual tourist itinerary. We visited the waterfront and took the cable car to the top of Table Mountain (possibly so named because it is a mountain that has a flat top, like a table. Spot a pattern?). We even spotted a meditating monk atop a rocky outcrop. I'm not sure if he was there to attain enlightenment or to offer us a good photo opportunity, but he added a dash of colour to the proceedings and for that we are grateful. The weather was fantastic, hot and sunny without being oppressive, and we enjoyed walking the streets of the city. The food in Cape Town is great too, although you have to remember that I consider the chip to be the ultimate achievement of humanity, so always take my advice with a pinch of salt (and a splash of vinegar).

Sunday morning we took a walk up the hill to a small restaurant that had been recommended to us for breakfast. By some bizarre freak of nature, Arnold's Restaurant was able to provide us with a substantial and tasty fried breakfast for less money than it takes to operate a kettle for 10 seconds. Somewhat more bizarrely, we noticed that had we arrived between 7am - 7.30am, we could have enjoyed the same thing for five kettle seconds, but why would we ever consider getting up at that time? The place was packed and we sat at an outdoor table, watching the world go by and munching on eggs, bacon and ostrich sausages. After several months of scoffing rice and noodles, this cholesterol-laden, greasy, treat was very welcome.

On my previous visit to Cape Town, some years ago, I had travelled down the coast to the small fishing village of Gaansbai. There is nothing remarkable about the town itself, yet people flock here from all four corners of our round, cornerless planet. The cause of all this flocking lies just a few miles offshore, in the waters around Dyer Island. You see, Gaansbai is perhaps the world's most popular destination to get up close and personal with great white sharks. Hmmm, deliberately jumping into water you know to contain large numbers of the world's biggest, marine predator. Surely this can be considered the stupidest activity on earth? After blowing up your own head, obviously. These huge fish have been protected in the waters around South Africa since 1991 and the growing population of this migratory hunter regularly hunt the seal colonies around Dyer Island. The best time to sea them, unfortunately, is in the winter, when food resources are low and they can be easily attracted to the boat. During the summer months, specifically now, the sharks show a sneering disdain for all things boat-like and seldom stick around for long. Despite the poor odds, both Cara and I wanted to give it a try and see what would happen. The last time I was hear, a large, intimidating shark tried to stick his snout into the cage a matter of inches from my head and a second shark managed to tear the cage door from its hinges while two young men cowered inside it. I had my fingers crossed for a repeat performance. I don't think Cara was feeling the same way.

On the drive down from Cape Town, we stopped in a picturesque little seaside town called Hermanus for a spot of whale-watching. During the summer months, southern right whales congregate in the large bay to breed and the males can often be spotted leaping out of the water in what are probably the cetacean equivalent of juvenile pissing competitions. Mothers with young calves tend to stay closer to the shore as they like to pose for photographs with the little ones. It has been documented that southern right whales are notoriously proud parents. If we ever discover a way to communicate with these fish, I'm sure each parent would tell us how little Eric was very bright for his age.

Despite arriving in early summer, the waters around the Cape coast were very, very cold. I usually make a point of not taking a dip in anything less than 28 degrees centigrade, but this was much lower. It was cold enough to make a grown man do a chimpanzee impression without feeling self-conscious, and we were expected to spend a good time in the water. After chugging out to what the skipper considered a good spot, we moored up and a crew member chummed the water with some fish heads and arse-cheeks to attract in the sharks. We didn't have long to wait for a very big fish to arrive. It kindly cruised alongside the boat, just to give us a good sense of scale, and I remembered Roy Scheider's immortal words from the first Jaws film, "We're gonna need a bigger boat!". The first fee-paying sharkbait donned their wetsuits and flopped into the now flimsy-looking cage. The skipper tried his best to draw the big female toward the boat, but the shark was not really interested and just stuck around to see if one of us was foolish enough to fall into the water. We weren't and it eventually lost interest and left. Thus began the pattern of the day. The folks in the tin can soon became tired and cold and clambered out for a cup of tea and a biscuit (Oh, I can feel the tension building!). It was our turn.

My wetsuit looked like two dogs had fought over it and smelled like the winner had marked his territory in the traditional manner. My mask was cracked, it bent my nose into my eye socket and mould was growing on the inside of it. As I eased myself into the water, the patchy wetsuit flooded and made my eyeballs roll back in my head. How cold was it? I was going to tell you that my scrotum contracted so quickly it catapulted by balls into my armpits, but that would be in poor taste, so I won't. Despite all this, there was nowhere else on the planet I would rather have been at that minute. But there you go; I always was a shark geek.

As the minutes passed, we all concentrated on staving off hyperthermia. The previous shark had definitely left the building and nobody else had yet taken to the stage. I knew that I could keep going on sheer enthusiasm alone. In fact, they would probably have to drag me out of the water by the earlobes when it was time to leave, or maybe just leave me behind. Cara was fairing pretty well, too. Apart from the loud chattering of teeth and wide-eyed, what-the-fuck-am-I-doing-in-a-cage-waiting-for-great-white-sharks-to-open-it-like-a-tin-of-sardines expression she was wearing, obviously. We made ourselves comfortable and settled in for the duration.

All of a sudden nothing happened, and I could actually hear the willpower of our caged colleagues crack and tumble into the frigid waters (although it could have been a fart in a wetsuit. I'm no expert). Nothing continued to happen, repeatedly. The others exited the cage to make way for more enthusiastic fools looking to dissipate body heat. Cara and I stuck to our guns and stayed where we were. We had come for great white sharks and sharks we would have. By this stage, nothing was happening so frequently that when something did happen, we almost missed it. I was engrossed in a particularly long period of inactivity when suddenly the skipper yelled for us to get under the water. By some freakishly anti-Darwinian reflex action, I had filled my lungs and plunged into the murky water before the sentence was even out of his mouth. With my eyes fixed on the green haze before me, my frozen fingers fumbled with the buttons of the underwater camera housing.

Not much more than an arms length outside the cage, a dark shape appeared out of the gloom and resolved itself into a bulky white shark. The body was grey and smooth, fat with the bodies of young seals and fish. The black, humourless eye regarded us with a predatory, primitive stare, a bit like Cara with a credit card and a shoe catalogue. It glided impressively in front of us and toward the bait line. Within just a few seconds it was gone, returned once more to the murky deep. We bobbed back to the surface and sucked in the air hungrily, even though we had only been underwater for about four seconds (I need more exercise!). I checked the camera to see what shots we had taken, but found only some photos showing a blank green space and a technically adept video of Cara's left armpit. Not technically what I was hoping for, adept or otherwise.

We had been in the water so long that I had lost all sensation between my knees and nipples. This may sound unimportant, but for a guy, any area of numbness which incorporates the genital region demands your immediate attention. I was becoming concerned that any future Michael Junior was about to turn into Frosty The Snowman. Then I remembered that we had mortgaged the rights to our first born child to partly finance this trip, and that any behavioural difficulties brought about by refrigerated gonads would be somebody else's responsibility. After that I relaxed a little. No more sharks appeared that afternoon, so we took a quick tour around nearby Seal Island to better catch a whiff of their overpowering poo, then headed ashore to formulate our boastful anecdotes about fending off enormous sea monsters. By the time we arrived back in Cape Town, we were both ready for a pint.

One benefit of staying on the busy Long Street was that our hostel was immediately above an Irish pub. Drinking ice cold draught Guinness for less than thrumfty pennies a pint ensured that we rarely strayed far away in the evenings. We even dined there on a few occasions. The food was mediocre at best, but after dropping in for a few pints 'on the way past', we lacked the compunction to keep moving and planted ourselves in a corner table for the duration of the evening. On the Sunday evening, a live jazz band was playing. Although the music was a bit 'zibbedy dooh wah, bazabaddy bow wow bink' for my liking, we still had a great night and the atmosphere was excellent. There are few post-pub experiences more pleasurable than standing up on wobbly legs after too many beers and realising that you only have to walk four yards home.

The next morning we took a trip over to Robben Island, the former penal colony where many of the Apartheid-era political prisoners were kept. After a ninety minute ferry ride, we were transferred to a bus and driven around the island to see the various buildings that made up the prison, during which time a disinterested lady gave us a capsule commentary on what each building was used for and how it was being utilised today. After our whistle-stop tourbus ride, we were shown into the former maximum security compound and given a very interesting tour by a former political prisoner, whose name I won't attempt to spell. After showing us around the various parts of the complex, our guide talked about the daily life of the the prisoners, and it did not sound pleasant. At the end of the tour, our guide made a point of telling us all that despite the incarceration, forced hard labour, starvation and torture, he and his fellow prisoners no longer held grudges against their former captors, and wished to keep the prison open as a museum out of a spirit of reconciliation. At this point I wondered whether he truly felt that way, or if maybe that was just the politically motivated spin being put on the face of New South Africa. I'm fairly confident that if it were me in his shoes, I'd be looking to bang some heads together by now. But maybe that's just me. I'm sure their sentiments are sincere!

We managed only a couple of pints that night as we were heading off early the next morning for Windhoek in Namibia, a mere 25 hours away by bus.

Mik

P.S. I know whales are not fish, so please don't write to correct me. I was also lying about the evidence of their parental pride, too. You just can't trust a word that comes out of my mouth, can you?

P.S.2. - Despite mentioning in the opening paragraph that Cape Town is not my favourite city, I still managed to write several thousand words of bollocks about the place. Still, I had to somehow justify the three months it took to write