South Africa diving - overview?

[cephalopod2]

Alternatively, I was thinking about also maybe arriving/leaving before/after them so that I could focus on diving a few days/a week without boring them, but then that would mean that I will be a woman travelling alone. I do it regularly in Asia, and have done it also in Central/South America without issues. How about South Africa?

MelasLithos I had no trouble as a woman travelling solo in Cape Town last March.

If you are open to cold water, I thought the diving in Cape Town was gorgeous. You can do trips to see blue and mako sharks (and a couple hours away, dips to see great whites - not even necessary to be a swimmer to do that one) but most of the focus locally is on smaller stuff. The reefs are riots of colour and there's a spectacular Lembeh level guide there, Carel van der Colff. There are sevengill, pajama and shy sharks plus some very cool endemics, including an endemic anemone that trots around munching on endemic sea fans (one of only two walking anemones known in the world), a beautiful 'frilled' nudi which is the only one in its genus, 3 endemic cephalopods (not easy to see), an endemic butterfly fish and triplefin (much easier to see), and more. They have a fantastic neon blue and orange ladybug (iphimedia gibba) which is huge by amphipod standards plus very friendly Roman and klipfish. Seals, wrecks, kelp forests...the list of things to see is long.

Feb is supposed to be a 'warmer' time of year to dive, but Cape Town area is still very cold, and both temperatures and visibility vary wildly, even on the same day in the same area. Definitely not for wimps. But the local divers were all lovely and super welcoming. Lots of beautiful and fun things to do topside as well.

PS thank you @3.j.l0uw and @Divescape for the past posts that alerted me to Carel's existence.

 

[MelasLithos]

@NatashaS Thanks for the recommendations. It looks amazing indeed!

 

[tomfcrist]

Madagascar, not South Africa, AFAIK

Africa is a big continent

It's big? I was unaware of that...Lol

South Africa is on high alert along with a few other neighboring countries that are across the water from Madagascar. Thanks for assuming I don't own a globe though.

 

[billt4sf]

Umuntu Tom

 

[cephalopod2]

2. If you were booking to dive SA first and Mozambique second, which airport should you be flying out of from Mozambique? The tours I have seen, bring you back to SA just to fly you out. Would it not be cheaper to book these two destination by yourself and schedule a return from Mozambique?

For @CAPTAIN SINBAD and others looking at first trips to Mozambique, a warning about LAM flights to/from/through Inhambane. I independently booked a 2 week dive trip to Tofo, Mozambique and the best way for me to route was through Joburg to Inhambane. I'm happy I did some research on LAM before I left. They stranded us overnight in Maputo on the way up to Inhambane and judging from the experience of all the locals stranded with me (many travelling for work), this happens frequently. We organized ourselves to press LAM for information every couple of hours but in the end lost 60% of our original flying day, plus another half of the day after, before we arrived at our destinations. In addition I narrowly avoided what I'm told would have been a serious visa issue - someone had to call a friend to get an immigration official to drive back to the airport so that I wasn't showing up to the rescheduled flight the next day, already in the country, without any kind of Mozambique visa in my passport (we were delayed so long all the Immigration staff left before we left the transit area). There are tons more reviews of LAM online now compared to 2014 - worth a read of e.g. TA.

For my flights back home I deliberately booked an overnight in Joburg so that even if my LAM flight was delayed, I wouldn't miss my international SAA flight. It turns out this LAM flight left so far ahead of schedule I came close to missing it, having been advised by the managers at my (very experienced) dive lodge that I didn't need to get to the airport as early as I had originally intended to.

My experience was that LAM makes Indonesian airlines like Garuda look like Swiss Air.

 

[Umuntu]

For @CAPTAIN SINBAD and others looking at first trips to Mozambique, a warning about LAM flights to/from/through Inhambane.

I agree with @NatashaS completely. I have similarly been stranded by LAM in Beira for a flight to Maputo connecting to Johannesburg. We ended up missing the connection in Maputo and had to endure a day of LAM bureaucracy in rebooking our connections.

There are some small South African companies operating flights into some of these Mozambique airports. It is absolutely worth paying a small premium and timing your stay to have a more reliable service.

 

[aquarat]

I'm a Cape Town diver, I thought I'd just share a few tidbits :

Africa is a big place and South Africa is a big place. You can find many different types of diving in South Africa depending on the location. I'm a fairly new diver, but I've dived Tenerife, Thailand, The Great Barrier Reef (Flynn, Agincourt near Cairns), Aliwal Shoal (near Durban in South Africa) and naturally a lot of Cape Town dives.

Aliwal Shoal :
The best dives I've had to date in terms of biodiversity and just general happiness have been Aliwal Shoal, specifically through a company called Agulhas House. I got to see a ridiculous number of sharks, including a Thresher Shark. Wrecks, fish everywhere, it was a sensory overload. It was a truly amazing experience. Agulhas House caters to everyone, from single tank divers to rebreather divers.

Cape Town :
Cape Town is safe, provided you don't go to *bad* areas. Disease is not an issue in Cape Town and you won't get food poisoning. Cape Town is generally a first-world location with some bad parts which are easy to avoid (you'll generally avoid them without even realising it).

I really enjoy Cape Town diving, but partly because it's a little more challenging. Cape Town has two diving personalities in that on one side of the peninsula we have *warm* water in False Bay and colder water on the Atlantic side of the peninsula.

The Atlantic side tends to have good visibility and good diving conditions in summer and False Bay tends to have poor conditions during the same period (they invert in winter).

Pisces Divers in Cape Town, who I did some of my initial PADI training with, are "recreationally" oriented (single tank, Scubapro Hydros rental gear, wetsuits). Their staff are friendly, they run a good, clean business. They're really fantastic. They're reasonably priced. They'll take you to see wrecks, reefs, seals and sharks. I dive with them regularly, I always come back feeling amazing.

If you're more advanced and you don't mind a drysuit (or getting a bit cold in a wetsuit) there's a group called "Underwater Explorers" (not to be confused with GUE), who do more technically-oriented dives. They're more like a bunch of dive buddies than a business. They're mostly twinset and rebreather but my initial dives with them were on 15L single tanks. If you're interested, let me know and I could sort you out with a twinset so you can dive with them/us.

There are also a few interesting shore dives in the Cape Town; Shark Alley, Long Beach, A-Frame, Justin's Caves, etc. are but a few.

I learnt to dive in CT so that I could dive on holiday in Thailand... what I didn't expect was that I would come to enjoy and appreciate Cape Town's diving far more than anything I've seen overseas so far.

Two Oceans Aquarium :

Aliwal Shoal :

Shark Alley (False Bay, near Cape Town) :

SAS Goodhope Wreck (False Bay, near Cape Town) - part of the "Smitswinkel" Wrecks :

 

[billt4sf]

Great post! Thanks so much.

What is the water temp in Aliwal Shoal? And I take it that's it's quite a ways off the coast?

- Bill

 

[aquarat]

Thanks billt4sf, I got a bit carried away . The water temperature in Aliwal was around 21 degrees C/70 degrees Fahrenheit according to my dive logs.

I dived Aliwal in a Santi trilaminate suit with a Santi "Summer" undersuit. It was very comfortable, I didn't feel cold at all. Our dives were around 1 hour 15 minutes long on average and max depths ranged between 26m/85ft and 30m/100ft .

I forgot to add a photo for the colder Atlantic side (this one was taken at "Star Wall") - the temperature was around 7 degrees C/44 degrees Fahrenheit :

 

[Umuntu]

I dived Aliwal in a Santi trilaminate suit with a Santi "Summer" undersuit. It was very comfortable, I didn't feel cold at all. Our dives were around 1 hour 15 minutes long on average and max depths ranged between 26m/85ft and 30m/100ft .

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A dry suit at Aliwal ? Seriously ! I guess Cape divers already have the dry suits.

Most divers at Aliwal will be in wetsuits. It's not cold water.