Diving with the sharks

After a brief stopover at Blue Sky Mining Backpackers in Warner Beach it was on to the small town of Umkomaas and the Aliwal Dive Centre and Lodge. We stayed here for just a couple of nights while I got to do three dives (even the dorms were mighty expensive, as they were just completing extensive renovations).

This dive site is famous for having lots and lots of ragged-tooth sharks during their mating season, which luckily enough just happened to coincide nicely with my arrival. Over my three dives I got see two turtles and a pod of dolphins right beside the boat as we were kitting up, but of course the real highlight was seeing three mature ragged-tooth sharks over two different dives.

These lads are mighty impressive looking sharks, about 2-3 meters long and swim with their mouths slightly open, thereby displaying their impressive teeth. They are the most common sharks displayed in the larger aquariums around the world, due to there docile nature but impressive appearance and size. They are actually very common this time of year and so are a major attraction - they are generally completely harmless to humans, unless your a complete idiot and harass them somehow.

It really was one of my scuba diving highlights to just relax and observe these magnificent animals in their natural environment. Again the visibility wasn't the best though, which was a pity, but I still got to get up really close.

I also got to do a nice intricate cave dive, just me and my divemaster-qualified dive buddy (Dave), which was brilliant. In fact, I was lucky enough to have highly experienced divers as dive-buddies on each of my dives (with 72 dives I think I was probably the least experienced diver of the lot). It meant I could really relax in the presence of the sharks (since everyone else had dived many times with sharks), and it also meant I got to have the full 50-minute dive time limit on each dive - usually inexperienced divers use up their air much more quickly than that.

So all-in-all some great diving, and I'd love to return when the visibility is better. The town itself was very small, so not many dining options, although there was a lovely bar/restaurant right on the beach which had fantastic views on the moon-lit night we were there.