Mad Mike

Mad Mike (far left) and his water craft

So I am encouraged by fish-breeding Steve to join Mike for a morning dolphin and whale watch.

Naively I agree, even though I am enduring “hardship” budget at the moment. Don’t ask me why, but I thought this was a local fisherman and we’d be out on some catamaran or fishing boat. Not at all, Mike has got a state of the art motor raft. A deeply religious man judging by his love of Born Again rock on his car’s cd player in his trailer and the open prayers he performs before taking the “boat” into the wild waters with his twin sixties. I immediately strategically place myself at the stern and he asks me if my glasses are firmly in place before roaring off. My glasses solidly perched but my much loved Juan Valdez baseball cap is not and I lose it in less than 3 seconds.

The raft bounces into the air hovers in mid air for a while then drops into free-fall before the next wave hits us and Mad Mike accelerate further with even further gusto and laughs with his death-wish grin.

This is so not what I expected. And I haven’t even had my morning black filter coffee.

Mike had seen a pod of four whales pass by the coastline on the way to pick us up and he is confident we can catch them up if we hurry.

His confidence is completely misplaced, however much we hurry. He eases us off for a while and we head to where the sea-birds lead us to the spiraling air bubble trap of feeding common and bottle-nose dolphins. There shiny skins glint like electricity as they flash past in the water gorging on the mackerel. Trying to photograph them is impossible with my zoom lens and I don’t even dare contemplating changing to my wide angle in these unforgiving waters. Bird dive-bomb the waters, usually successfully emerging with fish in their mouths. Below the dolphins and the sharks that also join in for this weird feeding frenzy.

dive-bombing bird

Jeans and boots were clearly extremely foolish for the journey as I have to strip to my black silk boxers, jump into the shark infested waters to pull the water travelling devise through two waves and bounce it into 2nd Beach. And all this before 10am!

No whales were spotted and i am in too much shock to complain. Nonetheless it did provide an adventure as I kill time in PSJ and it is certainly interesting to view the coastline from another perspective of the Wild Coast. Wild indeed!