From Port Edward in the south, to a few days in Durban, recovery in the Drakensberg to a microlight flight over KZN.

Not a bad place to be hey?

A few pics of the day on the road, Sunday May 30th. Enjoy – I did!

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After training for the last six months and finally getting through my second Comrades ultramrathon in my best ever time I have taken the chance to totally relax for the past couple of days – I seriously don’t think I could have done much else though.

The 89km race took loads out of me and my legs are only now back to full strength after sitting on my ass for two days relaxing in the winter sunshine of the Drakensberg mountains at Didima Camp near Catherdral Peak.

A few pictures from the race are below and there’s also a few of the camp too, so rather than dribble on as I usually do I’ve prepared two videos to summarise the experience. The first giving a tour of the route and the second a longer version showing how I took on the race. Enjoy.

Tour of the Route

The Race itself

Back on the blog again soon…

Ben

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I did it – after 6 months of pretty hard training I managed to complete the 89.25km Comrades Ultramarathon in 9hrs 32mins which is 50 minutes quicker than my previous best from two years ago during my Afritrex expedition.

It’s now a couple of days later and the legs are starting to recover – I can almost lower myself into a chair without using my arms! Downhills and stairs are still pretty challenging mind and it’ll be a couple more days before I can even think about going for another run…maybe I should just chill for a while.

After the race I headed up into the Drakensberg mountains to a place called Didima to get away from the outside world and it’s the perfect place to recover I can tell you. With views to Cathedral Peak and the entire mountain range the only disturbance up here is the occasional baboon trying to get into the room. Beware people!

Having some spare time has given me the chance to put together a couple of short movies about the Comrades which I filmed enroute during the Tour of the Route and the race itself but having a very limited internet connection means I won’t be able to get them up here for viewing until later in the week. They’ll also be some awesome pics of the sunrise over the peaks too.

Off horseriding this morning and the quad-biking too to explore the area as my legs just about get me to the restaurant at the moment!

Back with you soon

Ben

It was something I’d been looking forward to for weeks leading up to arriving here in South Africa. You might say it’s stupid…or too scary…or unnatural, but having the chance to go underwater and enter the world of these incredible creatures isn’t an experience I wanted to pass on.

Having fought my way through the minefield of adverts and booking agents I worked out there is in fact only one operator who leaves the Shelley Beach harbour and heads out to Protea Banks – rocky reef around 7.5 kms from the coast of Kwa-Zulu Natal.

The reef is a series of caves which sit up from the ocean floor offering shelter from the currents for the resident sharks which change throughout the seasons. Hammerhead, Tiger, Great White and Reef Sharks frequent the area but at this time of year we are only likely to see Ragged Tooth – oh well better than nothing I suppose!

The weather on the morning of the dive was just about perfect. With no wind for the two days leading up to my morning meet, the ocean was perfectly flat with just the usual Indian Ocean swell rolling in from the east.

As we pulled into the carpark ‘African Dive Adventures’ inflatable the ‘Black Pearl’ was easy to spot on the trailer with our dive tanks stacked around and a few guys wrapped up warm against the morning chill.

Roland, the Divemaster, was there to welcome me and introduced Kyle our skipper and the other 3 divers for the trip. Is that it? Just six of us! I’d expected a boat-load at least. Oh well less people in the water has to be better…or does that increase the probability of being eaten!?

Once I’d found some kit that a) fitted and b) worked with leaking air (a little worrying!) we loaded it all onto the boat and walked down to the water’s edge. It’d be too much weight for us all to launch from the trailer so we walk into the shore-break and climb onboard there…or that’s what they tell us, personally I think it’s just to make sure we’re all awake!

Kyle times the launch and then powers the Black Pearl through the incoming waves and we head out into open water, the sun’s rays just starting to warm the side of my face as it breaks the cloud on the horizon for the first time today.

Its quite deceiving you know; back on the shore the waves seemed pretty small and there was hardly any surf, but out here the rolling ocean swell is much more noticeable and our little boat seems dwarfed as we pitch up and down.

Once we reach the dive site there are three other boats out here already, fisherman all out with the early worm hunting for that elusive game-fish which are common in these waters too. But were not here for such small fry, oh no this is shark territory!

Roland runs through our safety procedures and announces we’ll be dropping straight down to nearly 40 metres below the surface to maximise our bottom time and our interaction with the beasts below. This could be interesting –I haven’t dived this deep for a few months and hope my ears hold up with the pressure.

Camera at the ready, masked prepared, regulator in? With a quick backwards roll I hit the water and start to descend. Passing 5, 10, 15 and into 20 metres of 24c Indian Ocean which as first glance looks pretty murky. Not ideal.

Dropping this quickly and trying to keep up with the group needs constant equilisation so I’m wiggling my jaw and filling my nose to clear the pressure in my ears almost every other second. We finally start to level out around 35 metres and for the first time I can have a look around at my surroundings.

The water down here is much clearer than up high, it appears we’ve dropped through the algae and plankton that’s above and entered the colder, clearer waters below with visibility up to around 25 metres.

The bottom is mainly rock interspersed with sand and compared to the Great Barrier Reef pretty devoid of life…maybe I’ve just been spoilt over the last few months! There are fish swimming around with a few colourful stripy ones being particularly curious of my camera.

But were not here for the small stuff – we’ve come here to see Ragged Tooth sharks who rest up here on the ocean floor during the daylight hours after a hard night hunting their prey!

As we swim over an opening in the rocks I see for the first time the entrance to the first cave and the familiar outline of sharks below. My heart rate starts to quicken…

Following Roland’s lead we descend into the cave and as my eyes adjust to the darker conditions I start to make out the outline of loads and loads of them – there must be at least 30 Raggies all congregating here!

Once I’m on the bottom I notice my breathing has accelerated in anticipation and I deep breath to bring it back under control – I do not want to run out of air too quickly, this experience is amazing.

As I film the larger of the sharks become more active and start to swim over and around us taking large circling routes above our heads which makes great pictures but also raises the stakes of the game slightly. This is what you’ve come here for Ben so enjoy it.

Ragged Tooth aren’t known for their man-eating abilities but at this stage that doesn’t matter – when these 3 metre creatures come within a few centimetres of you their huge rake-angled teeth look pretty damn mean I can tell you!

We sit on the bottom and watch for a few minutes and the sharks swim around us, checking us out, sizing us up or maybe just trying to get slightly further away from these weird bubble-blowing objects sat in their midst.

With more still to see and a ten minute decompression stop still to do Roland leads out of the cave and across the reef to another entrance, this time a swim-through. We descend into the darkness and follow each other through a small, restrictive tunnel – if your claustrophobic this is definitely not for you!

As we break the other end we enter another cave, this one slightly deeper and on the bottom there are our carnivorous friends again, about 20 of them circling slowly in the weak neap tide current below.

There are very few other fish around, probably a good thing if you’re the prey of a shark I know, but its very noticeable and some say that the area has become too popular with local sport fisherman or maybe its just the lull before the storm of the Sardine Run which starts in a few weeks time.

This incredible spectacle transforms these waters into a massive feeding pot for a few weeks every year as the migrating sardines moving from the cooler water off the Algulhas current enter the warmer waters of the Benguela current and come inshore. In fact so inshore that millions of the tiny fish actually beach all along the Kwa-Zulu Natal coastline much to the delight of local fisherman who net them, the birds that attack from above and the game-fish, dolphins, sharks and whales who reap the rewards from below. It is truly awesome.

Having spent around 25 minutes in the bottom at 35 metres there is a long decompression stop to do on our ascent so we leave the cave and head back up towards the sunlight above. The murky waters above are actually quite interesting when you have to hover and wait in them for ten minutes. The plankton, tiny creatures and jellyfish all swim about on their own little missions and its interesting wondering what they are all about – or maybe I’m feeling narc’d after the dive!

Once we’re back on the boat, de-kitted and warmer Kyle starts the engines and we turn back to the mainland. We didn’t get to see a Tiger or a Great White but we did have around 70 Ragged Tooth’s and I’m happy with that for my first real shark dive.

On the way back we get just one more little bonus as a school of dolphins race along in the waters next to us just in the range of my camera. Perfect.

It was great to finally have the chance to dive in South African waters after coming here for so many years on holiday but without a PADI qualification and the day delivered exactly what it promised. It will be great to get back to Australia and see the multitude of life that is there on the Great Barrier Reef but for now I have whetted the appetite to dive with sharks.

Now, where can I find some bigger and more deadly ones…

Ben

I’ve finally found myself an internet connection that’s quicker than snail-mail through which I can post a little video blog. It seems to be a funny habit I’ve picked up that when I go away on an adventure I grab my camera and start talking to it…maybe I’m going mad, or maybe I just think that out there in cyberspace somewhere, someone is watching my movements around the planet – and if you’re reading this you must be one of them. Welcome to my world

Well I’ve made it to South Africa and took the drive from the airport in Joburg down the N2 to Durban and then turned right and down the south coast, along the N3 to the little town of Port Edward. It took me 8hours to get there but there’s something I love about the drive. After spending all of 2008 on the road in Africa (www.afritrex.com) covering 65,000kms it was good to get back in the saddle again and hit the long roads of the dark continent.

The country is going football crazy, and understandably so. With the FIFA World Cup starting in under a month there are signs, adverts and promotions everywhere.

It’s just what Africa needs – the entire continent is football crazy! I watched the African Cup of Nations final between Egypt and Cameroon which ended    1 -0 and the city went berserk with cars and people filling the streets for hours after the game. Luke and I sat and watched as police cars raced around with their lights and horns blazing all in support of Arab Africa beating Black Africa.

For the 2008 Champions League Final between Manchester United and Chelsea I was in Matadi in the Democratic Republic of Congo sitting in a tiny little shack of a bar with a rowdy group of french-speaking football lovers, 50% supported each side and I was stuck in the middle cheering for Man U. The atmosphere was incredible with shouting, jeering and barracking amongst all of us and I will never forget it. Football was the winner!

I’ll be here for the start of the tournament and can’t wait for South Africa (or Bafana Bafana as they’re known here) to hit the turf in Joburg on June 11th closely followed by England (my team) and then Australia (my adopted team) on the 14th June which I’m desperately trying to get tickets for now…if you know of anyone with a ticket then shout!

Off shark diving in a couple of days time so will be back with another exciting movie very soon…

Over and out for now

Ben