CATS! And fish! Part 1

Today my dreams came true and I played with cheetahs. But first things first. We were up very early this morning to drive to Sodwana bay for scuba diving. Our trusty GPS guide bird, Fawkes tried his best but led us down the geographically shortest but not the realistically easiest route. We ended up driving through the game ranges and down dirt roads for about 40 minutes. Willie had to get out to check the water level in a giant mud pool at one point but we made it! We even arrived at the dive center precisely at 7am.

After we got all geared up we headed to the beach where the base was. This was unlike any dive either of us had ever done. After the briefing, they use a tractor with a pole on the end of it to push a large RIB bow first through the sand into the water. All the divers stand next to it and when you are deep enough they yell for everyone to jump in. The surf is not small. At all. The driver was extremely good - he made giant circles until he timed it perfectly and shot out between wave sets. With all the time the Willie and I have spent on boats this was still pretty nerve wracking! After an extremely bumpy ride to the dive site in 10 foot+ swell, the dive master counted to three and everyone fell backwards into the water at the same time.

The dive was actually a pretty difficult drift dive. We spent most of our time around 60' but it wasn't deep enough to escape the swell. When the big waves went overhead, we would be sucked side to side pretty drastically. Despite this, we still had a great time. We got to see a white tip shark hiding in a cave, a sea turtle, a giants yellow eel, and couple of huge schools of fish, some conch and a ton of little fishes. I even saw three Gills! (I don't know what the real name is but that is what his name was in Finding Nemo)

After about 50 minutes or so we came back up and had to hold onto the side of the RIB, take off our weight belts and BCDs and get in all while battling serious current and big swell. The ride back was upwind in building waves that put my RIB wave launching history to shame. Needless to say, we opted out of the second dive. The waves were just getting bigger so most people ended up bailing as well. While we were back at the beach changing we were greeted by about 15 monkeys who were all just running around! Many of them had babies that were hanging on their bellies. Willie had to drag me away from them.

***For some reason if I put too many pictures or have too long an entry, the mobile app that I am using to publish this wont work. So I am going to post a second one with the rest of the day's adventures...