Bird's Eye View of Cape Town, but Still Couldn't See the Sharks

Another weekend, another couple of exciting excursions. On Saturday, I joined Katherine, Michael, and some other iXers for a drive up Signal Hill and a jump off of it - we were going paragliding. It was a beautiful day, bright sunshine, clear skies, and no wind - wait, we needed wind. Yes, unfortunately, we picked one of the calmest days we have had here in Cape Town for paragliding. As a result, the girls (who weighed less) went first, which was totally fine, as Michael and I just talked and hoped for wind. 

 


By the time we had gotten suited up and buckled in, the wind had started to pick up a little. My guide rushed me over to our takeoff position and we started running down the hill (after I almost tripped and faceplanted), and before I knew it we were in the air. It turns out that my guide had seen birds catching a thermal, a column of rising air, and was hurrying to make sure we didn't miss it. We did indeed catch it, and it carried us up above our starting point and high above the Seapoint neighborhood of Cape Town. We chilled in the air for a while, looking over the houses, and golf course, and stadium below, and out over the ocean to Robben Island. The backpack has a built in seat, so I could just sit back and enjoy the view, and take pictures with the GoPro of course.





After about 10 minutes we started our descent, and after a couple twists and turns to make it exciting, we were back on the ground. The trip cost R1450 (~$111), making it the most expensive thing I have done here, and while it certainly wasn't the most exciting thing I have done, it was still fun.

I got to bed early Saturday night, in preparation for the 4:00 AM wake up for shark cage diving. I made the bus on time, and after a 2.5-hour drive, we arrived at Sharklady Adventures in Gansbaai. We had a quick continental breakfast, complete with sea sickness tablet, and a brief safety lesson, and then boarded the boat. It was a bumpy (but a fun, amusement ride kind of bumpy) ride out to where the sharks gather, and as it turns out, that would be the most exciting part of the day. We waited for just about 3 hours on the boat, with no signs whatsoever of sharks - the only sign of sea life was 1 dolphin. 


It was a beautiful day though and warmed up after about an hour, and it was enjoyable to just pass the time chatting. And I was very grateful the sea sickness tablet helped, and I didn't have a repeat of Robben Island. We finally made our way back to land, had a lunch of lentil soup and extremely doughy bread (I pressed into it with my finger and it just turned back into dough), and then went off on a hike. We walked along a beautiful beach down to an awesome cave right on the water, had fun exploring the area, and we even took a dip in the ocean. 



It was a long day (14 hours round trip), and was pretty disappointing not seeing any sharks, but overall it was still another awesome weekend in Cape Town.

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