Lindsay, Mike, me and Lucy in the back of the truck on the way to shopping in Gansbaai
I’ve been
blogging for about three years now- I started in 2014, shortly before I went to
spend that summer working up in Wyoming. I’ve always loved doing it, for
multiple reasons. Some travelers that I’ve met say that they like to keep a
travel journal; this blog serves as my version of that. Of course, not
everything I do goes into the blog, but for the most part I’m pretty open and
honest on here. I originally just started blogging as a way to keep friends and
family up to date on my adventures when I was away from home. I didn’t expect
people I didn’t know to read anything I wrote- I thought, why would they care?
But in the past few years I’ve been proven very wrong. I’m looking over the
statistics page on Blogger right now, and in the past week my blog has received
views from the US, the UK, here in South Africa, Ireland, Germany, Australia,
New Zealand, Canada, and more. I honestly don’t usually pay a whole lot of
attention to the number of views my posts get; I love keeping this blog, and
I’d still do it even if it was only friends and family that read it. But I’ve
just been thinking about it over the past couple of days, because of my most
recent blog post. I’d been wanting to make the blog post on the White Shark
Projects’ crew for a few weeks, but wanted to wait until I had some extra free
time to work on it and had good pictures of all the crew. Well, two mornings
ago I made the post, and within the first 24 hours of publishing it, it had
become my most viewed blog post in the years that I’ve been doing this. It took
less than 24 hours! I wrote out the post earlier in the day than I usually do-
I published it at about eleven am, here in Gansbaai time. Then I put my laptop
away for the remainder of that day, not checking out the post stats until I woke
up the next morning. I think I did a double take when I saw the number of views
the last post had gotten! Again, the number of views usually isn’t that big of
a deal to me, but it was still surprising to see that post get so many views so
quickly. I took it to mean that a lot of people really wanted to read about the
amazing crew here at White Shark Projects.
Anyway, with
all of that being said, time to move on to news of the past couple of days! On
Thursday morning I’d heard that there would be an early trip, but there was
only one volunteer spot on it. Thursday was Mayke’s last full day with the
project, so we let her take the spot. I still got up to help set up the boat at
5:15, and when we were finished a little after six, I actually already felt really
awake, so I decided to just stay up and start working on the crew’s blog post.
A few hours of writing (and about four cups of coffee) later, and the post was
made, which meant I was pretty much done with work for the day! That turned out
to be a really good thing, because the rest of the day quickly filled up with
other activities! When we were done cleaning up the boat and washing the
wetsuits, the vols piled into the back of the truck and Jerome drove us to go
grocery shopping. Dax decided to do a braai that evening since it would be
Mayke’s last night at WSP, which we were all up for! It was a little bit rainy
that evening, so we did it up at the other vol house, that had an indoor
fireplace. We knew that the following morning would be another 5:15 start in
the garage, so we decided not to make it too late, but it still ended up being
a great night and a great way to send Mayke off.
Yesterday
there was only one trip, bright and early, and even though I knew there was
only going to be space for Mayke, I got up to help set everything up as usual.
We knew yesterday was going to be another easy day, so some of us made plans to
do other things. Lindsay and Lucy had heard about the crazy fun that is
fatbiking from me and a few other people, and they were convinced that they
wanted to do it. Since Lindsay is only here for a week, they managed to plan it
fast, and at eleven yesterday morning, Lucy, Lindsay and Dax were picked up by
Dave to go ride the dunes! Meanwhile, I enjoyed having a few hours to chill by
myself around the house, and also went out and did a beach clean. The three
returned a few hours later with some hilarious stories of their attempts of
riding down the dunes- some successful, some not so much.
After they
cleaned up and relaxed a bit after fatbiking, the three of us decided to head
up to the other vol house to hang out with Dax and Mike. Shortly after we got
up there, at about 3:30, Tom joined us and played a shark documentary. That
evening we decided that, since there are now only five vols, that we should all
have one dinner together, instead of two separate ones at the two houses. It
was Lucy’s turn to cook, so after coming back to our place to grab the food, we
headed back up to the top house, which has a much better kitchen, both for cooking
and for socializing. The five of us ended up enjoying a really nice evening of
food, friends, and fun, before heading to bed early to be up for another early
morning on the boat.
This was a
really cold morning out on the boat- it’s definitely coming on winter here in
South Africa! Even with my jacket and long leggings on, I was shaking a little
by the time we got back from the first trip. It turned out to still be a really
nice trip though- we ended up seeing a whopping eleven great white sharks! That’s
the most I’ve seen in one trip since I’ve been here! The water visibility
wasn’t very good this morning, so I climbed up to the fly deck to get the best
views of the sharks. There were a few very feisty ones this morning!
This evening we have plans to go out
to a pub in town again since there’s a rugby game on that Dax wants to see, and
it’s Lindsay’s last night- she only got to stay a week! I’m not sure how it’ll
feel being the only American again. I was really used to it up until she got
here, but now… we’ll have to see. I guess that’s all the news I have for now. I
love that my last post has become the most viewed one- very appropriate that it
be the one I wrote about the crew! This post’s food for thought: “Success is not a destination, but the road that you're on. Being
successful means that you're working hard and walking your walk every day. You
can only live your dream by working hard towards it. That's living your dream.”-
Marlon Wayans
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