South Africa - Advice please?

[Noel Johnson]

Hi all,

Just booked the flights this morning, we've decided to go a bit further afield this time and go to Cape Town for Easter and our first anniversary

Can anyone recommend some decent diving centres?

Cheers all,

Noel and Dawn

[Mr T.]

Daz is yer man, he's just come back from Cage Diving with Whites! Lucky sod.

[daz]

Cape town is not the best place to dive from IMHO.  However don't let that put you off.

Things to do, places to stay.

Go to the Aquarium and book to dive in the predator tank.  Your entrance fee is included in the price of £40 for 30 odd minutes of great fun.  You could check out the predator tank first but that will cost you an additional entrance fee.  The rest of the aquarium is also fantastic.

Have an anniversary dinner at Morton's on the Wharf at the V&A centre.

Go to the local market down at the stadium.

Arrange cage diving at Gaansbai (We use white shark ecoventures but they all seem pretty on the ball).

This was where we stayed and the owner Chantel did everything she could to make our stay enjoyable, she was a very helpful and friendly host and the guest house is based 10 minutes walk from the V&A centre (Where the aquarium and just about everything else is based).  
Guest House

Also Chantel can arrange other things for you such as the cage diving, aquarium diving etc...

Other things to do.
Go on the wine route and visit the Spiers vineyard.  Go up table mountain, go to cape point, go to Robben Island to see the prison where Mandela was kept.

You will have more than enough to keep you busy without worrying about diving and I was more than happy with just a dip in the aquarium and the cage diving (Awesome).  Cape town has so much to offer.

If I can provide any more info Noel then give me a call (I think you have my number but I can PM it to you if required).  Also if you are interested I have edited the footage from my trip and you are more than welcome to have a look at it.  

Is Team Bunny at the dive show on the Sunday?

Best regards to yourself and Dawn,

Daz

[Noel Johnson]

Thanks Daz,

No we're only at the show on Saturday so we'll miss you unfortunately.

ATB to you and you'rs aswell,

Noel

[Simon TW]

<font color='#000080'>Just a point on the cage diving, I was diving with a SA national last week and we were takling about the diving out there and he mentiond cage diving and how the local divers are concerned, I might add that this was cage diving in open water.

The concerns are that boats are going out with tourist divers and putting them into a cage then chumming the water to attract the sharks. The sharks come and start to feed some work to a frenzy and hurt themselves on the cage, however the main concern is that you take a creature with a very small brain, it knows what is normally on it's dinner menu (divers are not unless they grt confused for seal or the like) then chum is introduced, this is just smelly scraps and is not identified as any normal pray. The only identifiable object is the diver, therefore the concerns of the local divers is that you the tourist is introducing diver to the menu.

It does seem to make sense, this is not a rant nor is it intended to be a judgement, just the opinion of a local SA diver about how diving is becomming in his own country.

[Spike Jackson]

There are a number of operators in Cape Town and teir prices vary widely. Scuba Shack was the cheapest but they do pack 'em in. There is a lot of diving to be done and some of it is pretty good with loads of wrecks, kelp etc.

[Diving Dude]

Just booked our flights to Jo'burg for the 27th Dec.
Plan is to visit my son-in-laws (Becky's hubby) family and also spend 4/5 days at Margate.

l picked up leaflets from two South African diving operators, Scuba Addicts and Dive South does anyone know anything about them or have any recommendations for the Margate area?