Due to being in Johannesburg for work this week, I took the 50 minute flight to Durban to dive on Aliwal Reef in Umkomaas. The cost of the flight from Joburg is about £22, but if you choose to drive the several tolls along the route come to considerably more than that and it will take around 6 hours.
Umkomaas is a small village dominated by diving operations about a 20 minute drive from Durban airport. I dived with Aliwal Dive Charters, which is run by two English ex-pats. We visited during a long Bank Holiday weekend in South Africa.
The operation was very professional and the boatmen in particular need a medal for even considering getting through the shorebreak. The reef itself lies about 5 km off the coast. The water temperature was around 18 - 19 degrees and the air temperature is around 24 degrees in April/May.
Transport to the launch area is very a collection of 4x4s that take you from the dive operation to a small river inlet, about 1 km. You enter the RIBs in in the river inlet which is calm and flat, in contrast to the pounding surf on the shore a mere couple of hundred metres away. There is no requirement to load you kit on the 4x4 or on the boat, the crew take care of that all for you.
Due to the size of the swell, divers are required to wear lifejackets when going through the shorebreak. The RIBS then hammer as fast as they can into a holding area just outside of the breaking waves. 5 or 10 minutes can pass bobbing up and down while the boatman looks for a gap in the waves. The boatman are very experienced in this, with each one doing this several times a day. Saying that a RIB overturned while we were there and resulted in the hospitalisation of the boatman and several of the divers.
As a side note, Durban hospital is very well equipped and has a chamber
There then follows quite a ride through often quite large swell out to the dive site. The reef itself is quite large and offers several different diving sites.
I was hoping to dive The Produce, a Norwegian bulk molasses tanker that struck the Northeast Pinnacles of the reef in 1974. My buddy and I have over a thousand dives between us but unfortunately we we consistently buddied with groups of Open Water divers and The Produce is more of an advanced dive - it turns out all the experienced South African divers head to Mozambique for long weekends.
The location of our first dive was on Chunnel. We entered the water in quite a strong current and descended to around 7 metres. The conditions for this whole dive could only be described as a 'washing machine' - the surge was unbelievable. I spent the first twenty minute eating my air supply as I was laughing so hard through my regulator. Each wave would move us up to 5 metres in either direction. During some parts of the dive the current was extremely strong and it was a hard slog to get around some of the pinnacles. During the dive we saw several raggy tooth sharks and nudibranch.
We ascended for our safety stop up the buoy line to discovery that the bouy was being held 5 metres under the water by the two divers clinging to it for dear life. I grabbed hold of the line just under them for a couple of seconds to clear a grab gained during swimming against the current. I then completed my stop in open water and then ascended.
Our second dive was on Raggies Cave. Even though the surf was much heavier on this second dive, the conditions could not have been more different under the water, this was also helped by the fact that this dive was closer to 20m. There was plenty of opportunities to look under the rocks. Under one of these we saw the largest turtle I have ever seen - by a factor of four or five. He was massive, dwarfing my 5'10". The rest of the dive was pleasant, as was the ascent.
Our third and last dive was on Inside Edge, this again was a dive around 20m and the current had picked up. This was a very fast paced drift dive with no need to paddle what-so-ever. Some nice potato wrasse and box fish with the occasional glimpse of a larger shark in the blue.
In summary, Aliwal Dive Charters were a friendly and professional bunch (despite one of the boatmen smoking while filling the petrol cannisters on a RIB!) and the dive offered some different wildlife that you would see in the Pacific or Red Sea.
If you're in South Africa and can take a couple of days to get to Durban it is definitely worth doing - now I've got business in the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands coming up, so I'd better brush off my drysuit...
James