Erin versus the Sharks

I'm afraid of lots of things. The death of loved ones. Dark allies. Being murdered, etc. But, most of my fears are (at least fairly) grounded in reality. I'm not scared of spiders, or heights, or the dark (when not pertaining to allies).

I am, however, scared witless of most ocean critters. Fish, crabs, jellyfish, dolphins, whales... and the worst of them all: sharks. I've gone a long way in conquering those fears on this trip. Snorkeling in Kenya and Tanzania (with real fish. and coral.), swimming (if briefly) with dolphins in Zanzibar, but it’s all been building up to the ultimate confrontation: shark cage diving in South Africa.

Usually great whites prefer to eat the multitude of fish that roam around the harbor of Cape Town, but those are scarce in the winter months here (that’s now), so they head to an area known as Shark Ally where 65,000 seals that make their residence there year round are systematically hunted down and eaten alive. It's the perfect time of year to use fish heads and chum to lure the sharks up to the surface and directly into your face. For fun!

Even before booking our plane tickets, I was sending YouTube links to Lisa and Paul insisting that they save the 100 odd bucks needed to come to face to face with my greatest irrational. I'd managed to avoid thinking about being caged underwater with hungry sharks for the majority of the trip, but was forced to deal with the idiocy of my spontaneous and rash decision. Unfortunately, Lisa and Paul had to deal with the consequences too. I guess it's the price to pay for my amazing company and lifelong friendship.

Which is how we found ourselves, this morning, facing giant swells and giant sharks on a relatively tiny boat with 20 other morons. After a two our van ride, a one hour boat ride that reminded both Lisa and I of the movie “A Perfect Storm” (How did no one puke in that movie? They just ran around acting heroic and coming to terms with their inevitable demise. Unlikely.), and a suspiciously short and confusing “safety talk” our guides began hurling our woozy fellow shark cage divers into a “cage” that was little more than a wire box with foam duct-taped (seriously) to the edges and tossing a disgusting fish slurry into the water around them.

Then came the sharks. Big ones and “small” ones (1.5 m – 5 m in all). Ones that had ragged fins, and ones that looked like they could swallow our boat whole. Lisa and I stood on the top deck snapping pictures while others suited up and were hurled (6 at a time) into the cage as others were dragged out proclaiming the “AWESOME” nature of their dives (which often included close calls involving fingers and elbows and entrances and exits).

Well, I hate to disappoint, but neither Lisa nor I ever made it into the cage. In fact, we didn’t even make it in to the wet suits. I could blame it on nausea or cold water or freezing weather, but that would only be a half truth. The whole truth is: I was scared completely shitless, and I had reached the limits of my bravery. I’m totally scared of sharks. And you know what? I have good reason to be. They’re crazy strong, huge, can turn on a dime, have two rows of razor sharp teeth, and while they don’t like to “eat” humans, it’s not entirely unfeasible that they wouldn’t try – especially if they came across a band of human idiots careening in and out of the water in to a shoddy, duct taped, wire cage surrounded by fish heads and guts.

So I failed, I guess. Paul went in after he puked and said it was “pretty cool”, and I was really proud of him for doing something that scary. So tease at will, but it took a lot for me to step on to a boat that was essentially shark bait. I guess that’s as fearless as I’m made.

Next stop, Manila.

Cautious Adventurers

Erin and I may be the most cautious adventure travelers to traverse Africa. Neither of us is particularly daring when it comes to risk-taking adventure sports. If you've ever swum in the ocean with Erin or me you probably know that we both have an aversion to swimming with ocean critters. We've probably watched too many Discovery Channel Shark Weeks.

On our first snorkeling trip in Lamu Erin didn't even get off the boat (though she did assume the role of the great provider by catching a fish for lunch). And I made it into the water for about 15 minutes before I started getting visions of being eaten by a shark and swam back to the boat.

So this morning when we embarked on a dolphin tour off the coast of Zanzibar I don't think either of us actually thought we would make it into the water. We were the only ones on our boat to spend $2 extra for the life preservers (and no, they don't come standard with boating in Kenya or Tanzania). When our boat pulled up next to the dolphins everyone else aboard hopped off and started chasing after the dolphins... Erin and I stayed put on the boat. But by the third jump into the dolphin colony Erin and I finally got up the nerve to dive in with the dolphins.

It was AMAZING. You only see a few dolphins on the surface, but if you look down you can see huge bunches of them swimming along just beneath the surface. I think I lasted less than a minute in the water -- enough to see it, check it off of my life list of experiences and scuttle back to the safety of the boat. Erin lasted about 10 seconds longer than I did before hopping back into the boat. But the important part is that we both SWAM WITH DOLPHINS!

Erin keeps telling me that we're going to go shark-cage diving in Cape Town ... we'll see if either of us makes it into the cage...

Lamu & the Muslim Rasta

On the recommendation of my friend Laura, Lisa and I decided to splurge and spend some time in Shela, on the island of Lamu.

Lamu is a European beach destination on the northeast coast of Kenya, located in the middle of a pretty conservative Muslim community. This made for a very interesting dynamic. On one hand you had Europeans (and us) frolicking around in bikinis (and sometimes less), and on the other hand you had a conservative community going about their day to day.. donkeys abound, the women are clad (in very beach inappropriate) black niqabs (which can't be pulled up - very haram - and therefore get wet and sandy).

Lamu is also where we got our first introduction to the Kenyan beach boy. While these boys are all members (or former members?) of the surrounding community, they have shrugged off (as far as we could tell) their religion and have become wild haired, Bob Marley loving, (mostly) pot smoking, beer drinking rastafaris.

How does that work, you may ask? I'm not entirely sure. There is definitely some palatable tension between the rastas and the surrounding community, but it wasn't violent or extreme in anyway. At worst I think the community looks at the rasta beach boys as sort of a minor annoyance, and low level security threat (a few of them have been involved in the muggings of tourists in the past, and of pickpocketing and that sort of thing)... sort of an all around anomaly.

I also wondered how rastafarism took hold on the coastal areas of Kenya. Does pot smoking and hair dreading increase in direct ratio to your proximity to the beach? Does Bob Marley sound more convincing when listened to out in the hot sun, on a dhow (it's a kind of sailboat) while fishing? (I say YES to that one, having experienced it myself last week). Does weed enhance your enjoyment of all things nautical? I don't know, but maybe the answer is yes to all of them.

Needless to say, we interacted with the beach boys much more than we did with the surrounding community. They took us on snorkling and fishing trips, they cooked us lunches and dinners on the beach, they built us bonfires, they showed us the phosphoresence in the water (so freakin' cool) they took us out dancing (oh man, that could be a whole different post. the hottest dance ticket in town is what they referred to as "the boogie boogie" but was actually called The Police Comission's Social Club, which was ACTUALLY this open air cement floored verandah thing with a dj and a man that sold beer from inside a cage. full of beach boys, prostitutes and Lisa, me and the two American girls we've been traveling with for the past week. it was obviously a LOT of fun)... etc... they basically tried to take our money from us in any way they could. It worked. It worked for them, and it worked for us.

But I couldn't help but wonder what they went home to at the end of the night (or in the early morning). Do they live with their parents, and have to listen to a lecture about cleaning up their acts? Are they pretty much ostracized from the community, and ignored? Is it acceptable behavior?

I don't know! It's another mystery. I'll add it to my growing list...