Bulletin 27
17 May 2007
Trip Report and Cape Town Pics

As I sit recovering from Blood Poisoning (one small little wound obtained while looking for elephants got infected and hey instant trouble) and the added bonus of finding out that I am allergic to penicillin (I don’t think I ever looked more like a cooked swollen lobster before), I have some time to laboriously put together a bulletin.  Not having my usual laptop and all its templates turns the joy of bulletin creation into a chore.

Enough talk of illness and the like lets get to some images.  I will post a few Cape Town highlights here and follow this with another bulletin containing some Namibian pictures.  The latter will be limited as my visit was not photographically related (I did however manage to take a few snaps here and there).

The highlight of the Cape Town trip in my eyes will no doubt be the moment I entered a cage to view Great Whites (very much a first for me…AND I LOVED IT!!!!)

I must confess that the decision was not taken lightly, and I had alternating bouts of cold sweats and panic attacks as I took a leap of faith and trusted my cameras well being to a plastic bag!  OK it is not your average shopping bag, as the bag was designed for camera gear.  But there is still an unnatural feeling as you plunge a small fortune in camera gear into cold (and might I ad very wet) water.  The only thing keeping the gear dry, being a layer of plastic, glass and metal clamps

I just requested a big smile for the camera!!!
It was tricky trying to take pictures under water, as the buoyancy of the bag kept bringing me up to the surface.  As I mentioned this was an absolute first for me.  I will definitely be looking into more under water photography in the future.  The bag performed just fine after some weights were added.  The only problem I had with the whole experience was that quite often a wave would batter the cage and a leg or two would shoot out between the bars of the cage (have I mentioned that this WAS A FIRST FOR ME).  These legs (mine) clad in a thick black wet suite, very much resembled ‘Seal Sticks’ a wholesome snack for the whole shark family to enjoy!  I, for one am happy to inform you that the sharks were not feeling very peckish on this particular day.

I think you know who you are! There’ll be more of this.
This one passed my nose by about 15 cm, a standard half a rulers length away!

This was one of four sharks checking out the suspended snack.  Not once was there any aggressive behaviour towards the cage.

My favourite image, a great white in its domain!
The penguin shuffel off Simons Town. This seemed to be some sort of social event.
The penguins seemed to like the rain about as much as I did on this very wet day.
All Images, Content and Website are Copyright of Karl Andre Terblanche 2005-2007