Cape Agulhas! Indian Ocean on one side, Atlantic Ocean on the other
Yesterday was a great sea day!
Well, as
those that regularly read my blog can probably tell, I’ve been pretty busy the
past week or so. Thankfully, I’ve finally found time today to make another blog
post. So, like the last one, I’ll go over the events of the past four days,
starting with Wednesday the third.
Knowing it
would be a no sea day, Karla had planned a trip to explore some of the caves
along the shore around Hermanus. At about ten, Karla picked up the two Alina’s,
Amber, Aurelie, Maarten, and me at the volunteer house. It was about an hour
drive to the caves around the coast, and when we got there it was cloudy and
pretty windy, but thankfully not raining. There’s a well defined pathway around
part of the area, but to get to some of the other caves (most notably the one
known as Devil’s Cave), we had to literally just climb along these sharp,
precarious rocks right up against the crashing waves. Amber, Karla, and the
German Alina decided to just stay on the path, but Aurelie, the English Alina
and I decided to follow Maarten along the rocks to find Devil’s Cave. There
were a few times when we almost lost our footing and fell into the water, and a
few times that the rocks shook or rolled out from beneath us, but we were
determined to keep going. At one point we had to climb on top of some rocks
that jutted out over the water much farther than others. They were sharp,
keeping a good grip was hard, and if we missed a step we’d fall a good distance
on the hard rocks and crashing water beneath us. That definitely got our
adrenaline rushing (a feeling I absolutely love!), but we all made it over the
rocks unhurt. When we finally came to the opening of Devil’s Cave, Maarten
said, “Okay, we have to go in now, while the tide’s still pretty low. If we
wait too long the tide will nearly fill up the cave and we’ll just be swept
away.” Of course, he waited for that moment to tell us that, but there was no
turning back now. We quickly waded through the water, which was a little less
than knee deep at the time, to the area at the back of the cave, which was
still dry. We took a few pictures in there, marveled at our success, then
decided we should head out while we still could. By the time we left, the water
we were walking through was up to our waists and still rising. The hike back to
the others didn’t seem nearly as hard, and when the group was reunited we went
to lunch, then back home.
Thursday
morning Jan and his girlfriend Jen picked us up to head down to Cape Agulhas,
which is the southernmost tip of Africa. It’s also geographically recognized as
the place where the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean meet, so it was really cool
to go and take some pictures there. We spent some more time climbing and
exploring around the rocks near the ocean, then Jan took us to a lighthouse
that we could go into. The woman that let us in said to be careful as we were
heading up because it was steep, but it wasn’t until we actually saw inside
that we truly understood her. We originally thought she just meant pretty steep
stairs, but not, it was about five or six sets of actual ladders we had to
climb to get to the view at the top. I thought it was pretty funny; I’ve been
bungee jumping, cliff jumping, swimming with great white sharks, and yet
climbing up those ladders really got my adrenaline going yet again! When we
eventually made it to the top, we took some more pictures of the beautiful view
that we were taking in.
Thursday
evening we learned that we would FINALLY be going back to sea the next morning.
It had been about a week since the last sea day, and although we’ve done fun
things those days, we were all eager to go back out on the boat. We also
learned that the weather was predicting pretty strong swells early in the
morning, but it would calm down later, so we were planning to head out at 8:30,
instead of 7:30 like usual. Getting up at seven Friday morning felt like
sleeping in for a sea day, since we were usually in the garage by six. It was
pretty easy to get up because we were all excited about being back out with the
sharks. When Maarten met us in the garage he told us that there would actually
be two trips to sea that day, so some of us would get to spend almost all day
on the boat. Amber would just be a client for her first day instead of
volunteer, so there was room for me, the two Alina’s, and Aurelie on the first
trip out.
The first
trip had some pretty rough swells, and several clients, as well as Amber, got
pretty seasick. The sharks put on a great show though, so everyone said it was
worth it. I brought my camera, but only used it on the second trip. We were out
at sea for the first trip a bit longer than we often are, and didn’t return to
the harbor until close to one. Amber decided she wasn’t feeling up for a second
trip, but all the other volunteers stayed on the boat, and only about fifteen
minutes after returning to the harbor, we were back out on the water. For the
second trip I went up to the fly deck of the boat, which is the best place for
taking pictures, and set up my camera. It took us over an hour to get a shark
to our boat for that trip, but once we did they once again put on a show, and I
got some more good pictures. We were the last boat in the area to head in that
day; by the time we returned to the harbor, I’d been out on the water for about
eight hours, with only that short gap in between trips.
Today was
another great sea day, thankfully. It was Aurelie’s last day today, so we said
she should go on the first trip to sea, but she said that, unfortunately, she
wasn’t feeling good and shouldn’t go out again. Amber also said she’d wait and
go on trip two, so the two Alina’s and I were on the first trip. I was given
the job of data collection for that trip, so I sat up on the fly deck again and
wrote down the data on the sharks we saw. It was another two trip day, but I
only went on the first one, then said goodbye to Aurelie before she got on the
bus to leave, and just hung out in the volunteer house for a while.
Now there
are only three volunteers here in the house- Alina, Amber, and me- and it feels
really quiet. Thankfully Maarten’s also here to provide the extra energy that
he always has. We’ve heard that tomorrow will probably have two trips as well,
so we think we’ll all get to go out at least once.
I think this
post is more than long enough! This post’s food for thought: “Life is not
measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take your
breath away.”- unknown
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