With out African adventure quickly coming to a close, as we fly home to Australia in under two weeks, we drove ourselves south of Durban once again at booked ourselves into Aliwal Rest & Dive in the quaint little town of Umkomaas. Kevin and Debbie have been running the outfit here since June ‘09 and have a stellar setup. Located at 39 Moody St (off the main road) Rest &  Dive has two excellent little self contained doubles, all with ensuite and kitchen inside. Outside there is a braai area, outdoor showers with piping hot water, and a 4m training pool that budding young scuba instructors in the area rent from Kevin and Debbie for their pool sessions.

The 7m rigid hull that parks itself in the driveway is impressive. Being slightly smaller than your standard duck means that Bruce and Wise (the training skipper) can manouvre out of the Umkomaas river mouth, through the shallow sand banks and out onto the shoal.

After talking with Kevin we lined up two dives for the following day, first out to their secret spot to play with Raggies (not Raggie cave, but further out into the shoal) and the second dive up onto the touristy cave sites. An early morning wake up call of 5:45AM and coffee saw up slide into our neoprene and doning our tanks out on Aliwal Shoal. With vis of around 10m and a current of at least a few knots we struggled to keep on the bottom to see the sharks, but once we stuck ourselves to the rock, we had an incredible experience with the mighty fish.

Countless Ragged Tooth Sharks swam around and through us, one alpha male cruising past me slowly to show off the fishing hook that was slowly rusting its way free of his jaw. After chewing through our air overly fast we took a surface interval next to a shark diving (chumming) boat and stuck our heads under the surface to check out over 40 Blacktip Sharks and somewhere, even through we couldn’t see  him, a BIG Tiger Shark chilling near the chum bucket. Our second dive took place on the tourist route, outside Raggie Cave. Again, hardcore currents helped us chew through air but we were welcomed once again by a huge family of sharks.

Seeing these creatures in their own habitat is awe inspiring and anyone who has preconceptions of sharks and how they behave in the presence of humans MUST come and dive here at Aliwal Rest & Dive. No cage, and in their natural habitat. Check this video of us on our surface interval, incredible.

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