Hello everyone! I hope you’ve all been keeping well. The weather here is absolutely ridiculous! It’s December, yet it’s been thirty-something degrees with clear skies for the last week and my poor British eyes can’t deal with how bright it is any more. Sunglasses have become a standard item of clothing, without them your endless squinting identifies you as the clueless tourist you truly are.
The Christmas decorations are out here in storm. We saw the Christmas lights in Adderley Street being switched on last night (a week later than first anticipated, we got the dates wrong) and it was utterly amazing. Where we go for angels, snowmen, winter scenes etc, Cape Town’s centre for shopping is decked in angels, flowers, and exotic animals, all in the form of huge lighting arrangements that stretch the entire length of the street. The switching on of the lights is a really big family day here. Celebrations started at 3.30 in the afternoon and continued on until late. There was a huge concert, a parade, even fire dancers! South Africa really knows how to party.
Of course there are hints of the classic western winter Christmas too. A lot of their wrapping paper is decorated with snowflakes, and I have wondered why people would bother decorating their windows with Snow-in-a-can when the tarmac is melting outside. I guess irony is to South Africa what sarcasm is to the UK – foreigners won’t ever fully understand it.
I have been diving twice this week. Up until now we had been diving on the Indian Ocean side of the cape, but this week we ventured into the Atlantic side. I had to be resized for a thicker wetsuit because most of the Atlantic currents come from Antarctica. I don’t recall ever being in colder water in my life. I did my first deep and wreck dives, and it was 7°C at the bottom. Some of the divers broke an egg at 30 metres below the surface, and the pressure meant the yolk stayed in a perfect sphere – that was a teeny bit awesome. The approaching swarm of box jellyfish? Not so awesome. Luckily they weren’t interested in us or our egg, apparently jellyfish do not care for diver’s humour.
Work has been going really well. I love SANCCOB so much! I managed to get some pictures of a few SANCCOB duties, like setting up pens and tube-feeding birds. Getting bitten has also become the norm. Some penguins don’t need to be force fed, they can just take the fish from your hands – they’re known as “free-feeders”. It’s better for penguins to be able to free-feed as it means we don’t have to handle them as much. Unfortunately in Pen 2 there are an awful lot of free-feeders, so feeding time now bears uncanny resemblance to the January sales. And there are always some penguins who think they’re free-feeders, but they’re really not. They take the fish from you, and then don’t know what to do with it. A few seconds later they’ve thrown it on the floor and are back at your feet asking for another one - so occasionally you have to help them.
I still haven’t climbed Table Mountain, that’s something I really want to do before I leave. I hope to do that sometime in the next week and take lots of pictures. And Wednesday is night-diving day, so that should be fun. Take care and talk soon guys x
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