Shark diving near Umkomass, Durban

I had visited Durban once in 2013 and thought that I had already seen what was to be seen. And then two things happened. One was after my trip to the warm waters of Mozambique, everyone mentioned that the water in Durban is also like that, always warm! Second was after the cage shark diving experience in Cape Town, I found out that you can do non-cage shark diving in Durban! When I did a bit of research for dive places, two popular ones came up - Sondwana Bay and Aliwal Shoal. Both these sites were close to Durban and so a plan materialised...

Flights from Joburg to Durban were quite expensive for the weekend and the weather was not supposed to be great. So we kept the plan tentative, that we would go if the weather wasn’t bad. The weather turned and so we finally decided to drive to Durban anyways.

We were staying in a village called Umkomass, near the Aliwal Shoal diving site. It was a small village on the eastern coast of South Africa, about 50 kms south of Durban. The route from Joburg was the same as we had taken for Drakensburg before and later for Swaziland - the national highway N3 all the way. And it was quite a busy highway especially with the number of trucks plying between Durban and Joburg.

The drive was about 600 kms and would take 6 hours. So we left at about 4 pm on a Friday night after office. However, one of our colleagues was unable to leave on time, so we had to wait for him at one of the garages outside town. Given how late we got, we were speeding quite a lot. There were even a couple of speed flashes on the way. Thankfully nothing materialised.

It was a good drive, at least for the first half when we could see around. Vast green farms creating many memorable landscape views. There were very few service stations on the way, which I found surprising. Or maybe they closed late at night. We could not see much in the second half of the drive as it had got dark. But I do remember a small town called Howick - it looked fascinating at night with its twinkling lights you could see from far off.

For the last 100 kms drive, we were faced with two options - one was to continue to Durban on the N3 and then turn right along the coast towards Umkomass. The other was to take a smaller road R603 towards Umkomass. We took the later option which within minutes felt like the wrong thing to do! The road took us for an hour on single lane roads which felt in the middle of nowhere and that too in the middle of the night! I think we also drove through multiple townships during that time but it wasn’t clear if those were good or bad areas. As we couldn’t see anything😜! And the last part of the road was along the sea, which again we could not see.

Anyways we reached our airbnb in Umkomass village, safe and sound but quite late around midnight. Our airbnb was a huge house with three living areas(!), a pool outside with a view of the sea and a huge garden surrounding it. The safety system was quite complicated, but we thought hopefully it was safe! After appreciating the house for some time, we quickly fell asleep as we had an early morning dive booked for the next day (btw I have become a fan of airbnbs now, its so much more interesting to stay in a house like a local than a hotel!).

Sunrise in Umkomass

When we woke up in the morning, we finally got the see the area in its glory. Umkomass was a group of huge bungalows, all located right on the sea coast. The sunrise rays falling on the house created some interesting scenes. And we saw huge fences around all the houses. So it wasn’t as safe an area we expected. But still there was a beachy relaxed vibe all around which we felt the entire weekend, inspite of the fences everywhere.

We had booked diving in the morning at the Aliwal diving school which was an 8 mins walking from our airbnb. I had plans of doing two normal dives to Aliwal Shoal for the day. But our instructor convinced me to go for the shark dive today itself. It was risky and I wanted to take time to get myself ready for it. When I asked the diving instructor about it, he said ‘its not risky and sharks don’t attack humans like they show in the movies. Sharks have been living in the seas for millions of years, and humans have been going there only for a hundred or so years. So the sharks haven’t really changed their food habits of millions of years to eat humans’.

I don’t know if it was this explanation but I decided to give it a go. (btw the shark dive is almost double the price of the normal dive). So we were off in a trailer to the beach at the river mouth, and then in a boat launch into the sea. The boat launch from the beach is apparently tough. The boat has to cross a sand bed - which is a shallow area with sand very close to the surface and brown waves because of all the sand. So the boat driver has to be an expert to get the boat out of the river mouth. We had to try two times to get it right. For the first time, we had to immediately turn and come back when one of the waves was bigger than was considered safe. But we made it out the second time.

For the first dive, we went to Howards Castle and got to the job of searching for sharks! First, the instructor put a can with some fish food into the water with a string. Then you go down along the string. Once down, you find a spot slightly away from the can and float around waiting for sharks. And then slowly and slowly they start coming in…

Black tipped shark

We saw some 5-6 black tipped sharks come in and swim around that area for about 30-40 minutes. Also along with them were the flat morenas, who stick to them eating the dead skin off them. And we also saw a huge potato bake. It was a beautiful sight, as if stuck in time in slow motion - just observing these ancient creatures swim gracefully round and round for long. If you are lucky, you can spot many other sharks in this area, like bull sharks, tiger sharks etc.. But none others came that day.

I was being relatively risk averse and mostly observing the sharks from afar. A lot of the other divers were swimming right in the middle of the sharks the whole time, as if with them. But clearly, I wasn't as convinced by the instructors' story of sharks not having discovered the taste of human flesh and so kept my distance 😜.

For our next dive, we changed boats and went to the Chunnel caves. While we were still outside, we saw a group of of dolphins, just swimming and playing near us! It was a nice sight to see the groups playing with each other, there was even a baby dolphin among them. One of the other diving groups had seen the same dolphins group while on the dive and we got excited.

Turtle during dive

After the exciting shark dive, this one felt like a typical dive. It was a drift dive along a sandstone reef. We went round caves and spotted lot of different sealife - a couple of turtles, a lobster, a reef shark, a moray eel, silver tailed sting ray, a shark tooth (!), a white tipped shark, a starfish, and of course, loads of usual coloured fish. Overall it was a good dive but we did not see the dolphins that we had seen swimming on the surface.

After the two dives, we spent some time at the dive centre eating breakfast in a relaxed ambience. It was so hot that time, it felt very comfortable to be under shade. We talked a bit to the dive instructors, they are always an interesting bunch to chat with. One of the girls had left her business development role to become an instructor. And apparently the dive centre goes bankrupt every few years but they still continue functioning as usual 😎.

Once back at the airbnb, we were so tired with the heat that we just relaxed. I sat outside in the terrace of the house, listening to the sea and drifting to a nice place… I also spotted a green snake and a rivet monkey right outside the house while lounging there. #WildSouthAfrica.

Umkomass beach

In the evening, we got out to explore the village a bit. We walked along the beach but it wasn't really a sit and chill beach - lot of people were fishing there. Also by the way, I saw lots of Indians here, running shops and on the beach. I also finally saw why people say Durban is full of Indians.

We were planning to drive to Durban for dinner, but were so tired that we cancelled our plans and spent the evening at the neighbouring dive centre - Blue Ocean Resort. They were celebrating their anniversary with a huge carnival party and a live singer. Our dive friends were all there as well as the whole village. In the beginning, there was a dance performance by a group of Zulu children, they kept us enthralled for long. And then the singer sang till late, keeping the dance party going. The party was a good one, but we got tired soon and came back before it finished.

The next day was relatively relaxed. We cancelled the diving that we had planned, had a home cooked breakfast and then left for Durban. The drive was all along the coast on the 102 and pretty all the way - the french Riviera of South Africa. A coastal drive, with green areas and beautiful houses (so typical of SA, it still never fails to mesmerise me!).

While on Durban promenade

In Durban, we went to the promenade on the beach and walked there for a bit. There were a few mud sculptures scattered along the way. And lots of high rises on the side plus lot of people surfing. All in all, nothing too exciting. The weather turned for the worse by then and it got cloudy and rainy. So we had the brilliant idea to have an Indian lunch at Copper Chimney, located right on the promenade. But it turned out to be a terrible idea. We even tried the SA Indian dish of bunny chow but did not like it either. The food was quite bad, and after a disappointing lunch, it was time to drive back to Joburg.

The drive back took us 6 hours and through 3 states. It was a striking drive when leaving Zulu land especially since we could see where we were going 😇. Mountains and green valleys with beautiful houses perched atop those. And waterfalls and so on. We saw rural areas with cows and goats and farms on the sides. And secondary forests and loads of pretty vistas. There was no sun all day but still it felt like paradise when we were there.

On the way back, we crossed a pass where it was totally foggy. Driving there felt tough given the cars were still driving fast and there were loads of trucks driving fast even though it was mountainous and foggy. We somehow made out of it during daylight. We almost got stopped by a policeman too once but thankfully he was too lazy to walk till where we had stopped. The sunset was again good, with a great orange hue visible till very later at night. Its always so difficult to describe memorable drives, isn’t it?

Durban skyline

We finished the drive in 6 hours with one stop in between and were back in Joburg by night. It was a nice weekend, even though we were not sure that we would be able to cover the 6 hour drive comfortably. But it turned out to the quite easy. On this trip, we could have given Durban a miss as it was just a typical city. But the rest of the trip was memorable. Durban countryside has a lot to offer, unlike the city. And I can see myself going there again too, maybe staying at a different village this time?

Wildlife safaris in Kruger, again

I have become quite fond of wildlife safaris since my trip to Serengiti in 2009. And having been on a safari once has made it difficult for me to see animals anymore in captivity in zoos. They deserve to be in the wild - where they can roam around as kings and can be themselves (yes, every animal however small, walks around in its natural environment as if it owns the place). After experiencing such scenes, its tough to go back to the constrained cages of zoos and be able to enjoy them.

In South Africa, there are many game parks - some big and some small, some private and some government owned. The private ones are very very expensive, so I didn't go to any of them (they generally cost around $400 per night or more). I went to Kruger once with my parents last year. But I was itching to go there again. Kruger is about 4-9 hours drive from Joburg depending on which part of the park you drive to. The north is supposed to be more remote and better for viewings given less crowds and the south is more convenient and touristy. Anyways given the long drive, both my visits to Kruger were to the south, though different parts of the park.

This time I went to the Crocodile Bridge area while staying in Marloth Park outside Kruger. We drove on Friday night from Joburg, taking the same route as always on N4. The overall drive was good except one part where we did not follow google maps to the Schoemans Kloof valley and took the main highway to Marloth Park. It turned out to be a one way road and we got stuck behind long trolleys for very long. And the trucks on the way were driving much worse than usual too. So the 4 hour journey turned out to be much longer than expected, almost 6 hours!

I don’t know why but there was a lot of police on the way also that day, much more than we had ever seen before. And it felt that there were very few good garages on the way to stop for a bite. So we kept looking but when we did not find any, we stopped in Nelspruit city for dinner, in the mall at Emnotweni Casino Hotel (part of the Sun group). All malls across the world have become the same now. So we saw the usual retail shops in the mall and went to Nando’s for dinner.

We had booked an airbnb in Marloth Park, which is a walled estate with huge holiday houses for the rich, sharing its boundary with the park. We reached quite late and crashed soon enough. But even in the short drive inside to our house, we spotted a herd of impalas, two kudus and an owl, already getting us excited for the next day! It felt nice to live in a house rather than a typical hotel. It was also a different experience living in the wild, with sounds of animals outside giving company. But the upside was the fresh air, the clear starry skies and the amazing feeling of waking up amid the wildness outside.

The gates for entering the park for morning safari open at 5:30 am. And even though we had reached late the last night, we got up early in the morning ready for the safaris at 6 am. We started driving towards the Crocodile Bridge gate, but before we got to the gate, we already started spotting wildlife within Marloth Park and got very delayed! Since Marloth Park is right next to the park, a lot of animals just cross across and can be spotted roaming around inside the estate.

Giraffe herds in Marloth Park

We saw kudus and giraffes running across the road avoiding cars. There was one huge group of 7-8 giraffes with 4 babies crossing the road - I have never seen such a big group together. And then there was a mongoose. These spottings delayed us so much that we got to the gate only by 7:30 am which may already have been too late! The drive towards the gate was fascinating by itself, especially in the morning just when the sun was rising. There were mountains far off playing games with the sunrays, and banana and sugarcane plantations stretching till those mountains. It was almost magical, being so close to nature so beautiful. By that time we were all very excited for the day lying ahead inside Kruger.

Once inside, we almost spent 12 hours on safari. The typical day for most people involves 2-3 hours safari in the morning and another 2-3 hours in the evening. It's especially easier to do that if you stay within the park. But since we were staying outside, we decided to stay in and drive the whole day 😇. Though honestly, we had tried that earlier also and did so again, but it doesn’t help much. The major spottings always happen in early morning or during sunset time as that is when animals leave their resting places to find food. Plus its too hot in the middle of the day anyways. But it was worth a try still.

Kruger panorama

We had a long day, driving from Crocodile Bridge gate to Lower Sabie Restcamp to Tshowane to Skukuza and then back out from Malelane gate. We drove through main roads and the off-roads. The whole area was a lot greener than my last visit in October last year, when it was all dry and brown. Now it was all green everywhere, the trees as well as the grass cover. We drove on mud roads and it was a lot better than my last visit - there was less dust in the air. And same as last time, there was no data signal inside the park, so its always good to carry a map with you. We were able to catch wifi along the edge of the park, but would lose signal as soon as we started driving inside.

Warthogs

We of course spotted the usual animals during the day - huge herds of impalas lazily crossing the road. There was one herd which kept crossing for 30 minutes, it must have had at least 200 in the herd! We spotted many warthogs families running around madly, with the little ones obediently following their parents. Many many giraffes eating tree leaves with a grace not seen in any other animal. And lot of individual elephants eating at the side of the roads.

Wild buffalo herd

We also spotted a huge buffalo herd across the road next to the river. I saw a lot more wildebeest and zebras than my last trip where we had barely seen a couple. We saw some hippos in the water, but none outside given how late we had started the safari 😔.

Vulture atop a treetop

In every trip to the bush, you end up seeing something different from all your previous ones. In the first half of the day, it was vultures - I saw lots of them sitting alone and observing miles around from right on the top of trees.


We had a lunch stop at Lower Sabie Restcamp when we got tired and the weather became too hot. It felt nice to sit under cool shade and eat something cool. We had lunch at Mugg and Beans, which was an open air restaurant just next to the river. And I could see some buffaloes, an elephant, a hippo and 3 baby giraffes very far off. It was a nice feeling to have my ice-cream with wild animals walking around 😁.

The camp felt like a nice place to stay, they had mud huts right next to the river where you can stay and observe the wild animals coming for a drink, right from the comfort of your room. These camps now also have maps where visitors can put markers to show where they recently spotted the big 5 or the other rare animals. I don’t know if they had them when I went there last time. But we found it so helpful this time. We checked out where cheetahs, lions and rhinos had been spotted and left soon on their trail.

Elephant crossing

The next stretch of our safari was relatively boring and we did not see anything out of the ordinary. We saw a herd of elephants who has recently wallowed in the mud and looked brown rather than grey. Guess they were also feeling too hot and preferred to be dirty with mud to beat that. And then we spotted many larger than usual groups of giraffes (even up to 8) with so many babies in their group.

Impalas huddled under the bushes

We saw 4 male kudus walking around together and they looked impressive from afar with their huge horns and confident gait. We went to one lookout point and two waterbodies. But all we saw were a few hippos and a crocodile in one of the waterbodies. And the usual impalas were sitting in large herds under small bushes in groups of 1-10 to avoid the heat.

Rowdy velvet monkeys

A bit bored, we made a quick stop at the Tshowane picnic area for a quick snack and break from the sun. And there for the first time I saw velvet monkeys. They should instead by called "rogue monkeys". There was a group of at least 10-12 of them and I must say they are the most active and rowdy monkeys I have ever seen! The entire time we were there, they were running around, jumping on the roof, fighting and so on. I don’t think they stopped for even a second the entire time. We had to be quite careful to avoid them stealing our food.

Lionesses

Our next stop was Skukuza Restcamp, again without spotting anything but after that (which was the typical evening safari time), our sightings again improved.It helped that we checked the sightings map at Skukuza. Our next sighting was the highpoint of this day - two lionesses sitting under a tree. We were there for about 20 minutes and witnessed some cool scenes. First, the lionesses just kept sleeping. Then they both got up, walked a couple of feet and slept again under a different tree, with ones head on the other’s body.

Then one impala started walking towards them, slowly, unaware. One of the lionesses woke up and started staring at it, intently and silently. The impala kept walking towards them and we were expecting a kill… But then a warthog sped out of nowhere towards the scene and shooed the impala away! By this time, the other lioness had also woken up.

The warthog and the lioness spotted each other, and there was a few seconds of a standoff between them (very brave of the warthog). It felt like he would stand his ground but then he ran away, as suddenly as he had appeared. The lionesses woken out of their sleep, walked around a bit and finally went back to sleep again, under the shade. It was very interesting to see this weird scene in the jungle. Am guessing it happens all the time, but for me, it was very very interesting. I am sure thats not the reason, but it almost felt like the warthog saved his friend, the impala from the lionesses!

Queen of the jungle, in all its majestic glory

By this time, it was time to leave. The park gates close at fixed times (6 pm nowadays) and if you do not reach the gate by then, apparently they don't let you out! So we started driving towards Malelane gate to get out by 6 pm. And then the sightings started delaying us, one by one. We first ran into a wild dog standing on the road. The cars in front of us scared him and he ran away very quickly, but I still remember the standing ears and the lean body, staring at the cars. It almost felt like a hyena to me, and also was the first time I had seen a wild dog so close.

Lazy rhino grazing

By this time, we had seen 3 of the big 5, but not the rhinoceros or the leopard. And then in the last half an hour before leaving the park, we kept running into rhinos after rhinos. First was a group of 3 rhinos far off behind grass and bushes and we kept waiting there the whole time for them to come out. Disappointed after wasting so much time unsuccessfully, we left and then ran into four rhinos lazily eating grass in the open along with a few elephants, zebras and wildebeests alongside. It was so late and getting dark that we had no time to photograph them and we left soon enough.

Rhino's ass

And then we saw another rhino next to the road showing us his ass. And then another one, even closer! By this time we were so late, we stopped stopping and had to drive above the speed limit of 40 kmph to get to the gate in time! We were still about 7 mins late and the guard let us go out with a warning, phew! But it would have been fun to see what one would do if you have to spend a night in the jungle not being able to get out 😆.

It was a bit of a drive to get back to Marloth Park along the highway as we had exited a different gate. But with a beautiful sunset behind us, it was a fun drive. We had dinner at Jabula restaurant within Marloth Park. The ambience was nice, a restaurant in a wooden bungalow in the middle of the wild. But the food there was quite average. Also there were loads of mosquitos there and for the first time in South Africa, I had to put mosquito repellant to avoid them.

Day 1 drive route:

Vultures drying themselves in the sun

We spent the second day also in safaris inside the park, again entering from the Crocodile Bridge gate. The day was a little less exciting though, because we started the safaris late and left the park by about 2 to drive back to Joburg. We did not have any major spottings this day. The day started with the usual giraffe herds running around on the road in Marloth Park, this time it was a group of 7. When we entered the park, we saw baboons on the river bridge running with their babies. And then vultures again, this time stretching their wings on the treetops after the rain last night and drying themselves in the sun.

Crocodile River

We drove along the river a bit but just missed a lion who had been spotted 5 mins before us. We saw him walking with his tail in the air and then lost him completely 😔. We saw two rhinos lazily move towards a road and then vanish under the bushes. Then a tortoise, walking slowly along the road, trying to run away from us. And a turtle (for the first time in the wild) in a small stream crossing the road, swimming furiously. We also for the first time spotted about 2-3 herds of impalas that day which were all male (the male has the horns, and generally there is one head male and a few baby males in any herd). I found that a bit weird.

Elephants too close for comfort!

We did run into a herd of elephants which was a bit of an adventure. They were crossing the road and there were multiple babies with them. While silently walking across, at one point the matriarch just turned and started moving towards us on the road! It was a tense few seconds where I stopped taking pictures and closed the windows. We were a bit scared to start the car to run away but thankfully she turned and went back to where she was walking. But those few seconds made me realise that everything said and done, in the jungle - anything can happen!

Hurt waterbuck

We stopped at Pretoriuskorp Restcamp for a quick sightings map check and then left soon enough. We saw a lone red hartebeest grazing on a hill. And on one road, we ran into a hurt waterbuck which could barely walk. He was standing in the middle of the road. We waited for it to slowly walk away, but I left thinking that it would definitely fall prey to predators by the end of the day 😔. We also saw a fish eagle perched on the top of a tree, near a water body - I have heard they are amazing hunters and quite rare to spot. Then we drove twice through an area where some other people had spotted a pride of lions with multiple cubs, playing and creating a scene, but we could not spot them 😖. So as I said, a very average day.

Moods of Kruger

We drove up a couple of mountains and saw beautiful landscapes, of cities nearby, the endless park and so on. We did not spot too many birds this time. The most common was a blue bird which we saw everywhere. And guineafowl always on the road, trying to run away stupidly! But nothing more significant on the bird side either. Overall it had been very very hot this time and had been tough to keep the windows open most of the time. Still we drove with our windows open a lot but apparently you are not supposed to(?!).

Driving through townships 

outside Kruger

We finished our safari and left from the Numbi Gate by around 2 pm and then google maps took us through a few townships before we hit the highway at Nelspruit. The townships though obviously not rich felt very very picturesque, perched on top of mountains with breathtaking views. It was a nice fresh drive back. We again stopped at Emnotweni mall in Nelspruit for lunch and then onwards to Joburg (the mall shops had closed by 3 pm because it was Sunday)!

The drive back was uneventful and this time we went through Schoemans Kloof, smartly. It was all green and picturesque, with the orange plantations everywhere. We stopped at their shop but they did not have fresh fruit juice, as advertised on the billboards.

Sunset driving

The drive back to Joburg had many beautiful vistas and valleys (as usual). There was a bad rainstorm on the way and we couldn’t see anything for some time. Then it all got better by itself and got light suddenly! I wish there is some way to capture all these vistas that I drove through in my time in South Africa, it is so difficult to capture all these brilliant memories.

Anyways, it was a nice weekend in the bush. I know lot of people find Kruger too touristy. But for its a convenient and comfortable way to see animals in their natural surroundings. And I can see myself being back there again, soon...

Day 2 drive route: