Wine, Whales, and Whites (Great Whites, that is)

We decided to head out of Cape Town for a couple of days as the surrounding area has a lot to do and see.  Our first stop was a little town called Hermanus, 122 km south of Cape Town reached by driving on a beautiful coastal road.  Hermanus’ claim to fame is that it’s the world’s best land-based whale-watching destination.  The southern right whales come every year between June and December from the Antarctic waters to calve in the warmer shallower waters off the coast here.  The town was cute and there were plenty of restaurants with windows overlooking the bay so that you could whale watch.  We found a great spot for lunch and we sat there, staring out into the water waiting for a whale to show up.  Supposedly if we came a month later there would be over 50 whales in the bay, but being a little early we had to wait and stare.  Sure enough, about an hour later, we could see water flying out of the sea in a V shape pattern, indicative of the blow holes of the southern right whales.  After that, a whale would continually breach (launch out of the water and crash back into the sea with a huge splash) which was a truly amazing and powerful thing to watch.  Another whale came right up to the shore to swim around and gracefully play in the kelp.  I could only imagine what it would be like with 50 in the harbour, as watching 2 of them was already a really moving experience.

About 50 kilometres past Hermanus on the same coastal road is a town called Gaansbai.  Though this town was not as picturesque, an experience of a lifetime was waiting for us there.  A 20 minute boat ride from the Gaansbai coast lies “shark alley”, and Di and I were signed up to do some cage diving with great white sharks.  We went with a company called White Shark Projects which is a conservation and ecotourism outfit.  They were passionate in the saving of the sharks and before we hopped on the boat we were given the stats and issues with the dwindling shark population of the world.  Their estimates are that the great whites would be extinct in 10-15 years if what’s going on out there continues.  “What’s going on” was really embarrassing to Di and I, as we were the only tourists of Chinese origin in the group of 18.  Sharks around the world are dying at alarming rates, pretty much all due to shark fin soup, a Chinese delicacy that I am extremely guilty of indulging in my whole life.  After we were given the informative talk we took the boat out to a spot the captain thought would be favourable for finding sharks, and then chum was thrown into the water.  Like whale watching, he said we would have to just hope sharks were in the area and we would have to wait.  Di and I were in the first group to get into the freezing (about 12 degrees) water.  We put on 7 mm wetsuits and dive masks and jumped into the cage which was just hanging off the side of the boat.  Though it’s called shark diving you actually don’t get scuba gear as they found the bubbles were not conducive to the experience, so basically we would just wait in the cage with our heads above the water, and when they yelled “Down!” we were to drop ourselves underwater and hold our breath as a shark swam close by.  They would lure the sharks around the boat with the chum, and then they would use a large tuna head tied to a piece of rope to draw the sharks close to the cage for us to see.  Now the waiting in the water was not fun as the waves were quite choppy and as I said before the water was cold.  In addition the visibility was only about 2-3 metres when you were underwater.  But when they yelled “down” and you tried to focus on that tuna head being pulled toward you, suddenly a large shark would emerge, jaws open ready to bite.  That experience is completely indescribable, and no matter how many times you’ve seen it on the Discovery Channel it cannot compare.  Having an apex predator literally an arm’s length away from you with its eyes looking at yours as it swims by is unbelievable.  There were times in between shark sightings (after seeing how formidable they looked) when I would look at the extremely meek looking cage that was protecting us and think, “what the hell am I doing in here?”  After 45 minutes in the water we got out so that others could get in, and watching the whole thing from the boat was to us equally as exciting.  The sharks would breach as well like the whales, but they would do it with their jaws wide open trying to eat.  Witnessing that definitely brought some different emotions (namely fear) when compared to watching the whales breach.  As you can see from the picture above the sharks are right beside the boat, and following their dorsal fins as they slowly circle us with their silhouettes just underneath the water is absolutely spell binding.  The captain said we had a very good day as we saw 7 different great whites, all ranging from about 3-4 metres in length.  Unfortunately the even bigger ones are hard to spot now as a lot of them have been fished out.  Watching these incredible predators was mind-blowing.  They are beautiful, graceful, powerful, and terrorizingly (I’m pretty sure that’s not a word) awesome.  Plus our oceans need them, so we’ve decided to not order any more shark fin soup, and I hope you’ll do the same.  I also hope that that will be last time Di and I will ever run into them underwater.

Lastly we spent a few days in the wine country.  The setting was stunning.  Then again, when is wine country ever not stunning?  We spent a few nights in the picturesque towns of Franschhoek and Stellenbosch, our bases for visiting the vineyards.  South Africa is now the 9^th largest producer of wine in the world, and the quality is outstanding.  The signature grape here is called the pinotage (a cross between the pinot noir and cinsaut) and over the many days of tasting we really enjoyed this varietal.  Though all the wineries were beautiful, our favourite was one owned by the golfer Ernie Els!  Its location was as scenic as it gets, and his wines (named after himself) were the favourite of our trip.  If you can, try to find a bottle of his Bordeaux blend.  As with all other wine regions, amazing food usually goes hand in hand, and every meal we had here was fantastic.  We were told that the highest rated restaurant in South Africa, and also consistently ranked as one of the top 50 in the world, was in Franschhoek, so we had to give it a try.  It was called The Tasting Room and Chef Margot Janse gave Di and I one of the best fine dining experiences of our lives.  We each had the tasting menu and every single item brought to the table was incredible.  I’m usually not a huge fan of the flavoured foams and the dry-ice presentations but it really worked here.  The quality was world class, yet the price was extremely reasonable (about 1/3 the price of places we ate it in Paris and New York).  To emphasize my point, we had an excellent bottle of wine here and it cost us the equivalent of 30 USD, about the same price we paid for a glass of wine at Le Cinq in Paris.

As Di wrote previously, Cape Town is a remarkable place with a lot to offer.  However we could have easily spent an extra week just outside of Cape Town as well.  As a destination, South Africa is in my opinion under-rated.  Everyone is concerned about safety and though there are these issues, we never felt really unsafe the whole time we were here (though Johannesburg is supposedly different and far more dangerous).  Maybe it was low season, but the prices we were paying for food and accommodation were extremely affordable for the quality you got in return.  Hopefully one day the social issues will resolve, because with that fixed, Cape Town and its surrounds would be one of the greatest travel regions around.