Predators I Have Known - Alan Dean Foster [73]
XII
AIR JAWS
South Africa, June 2002
THE SKY OVER WESTERN CAPE had opened, and it was pouring down rain enough to sink a galleon. Except my friend Ron and I were not at sea. It only felt that way. Having left Augrabies Falls National Park in the province of Northern Cape, we had been driving all day in hopes of reaching Cape Town before dark. Heralded by mountainous dark clouds rolling up from Antarctica that concealed much of the region from sight, we had been driving through torrential rain for nearly an hour.
While I struggled to negotiate the alien streets in the dark and the rain, Ron poured over the map of the city and the instructions we had been sent. Either the hotel we had been told to stay at was not where it was supposed to be, we had been given inadequate directions, or the rain had swept us halfway to Durban. Nearly overcome by darkness and fatigue, we were ready to credit any of these possibilities.
“This is crazy,” I finally muttered. “Forget the reservation. We know the boat leaves from Simon’s Town. Lets go there and find a room.”
Ron eyed me uncertainly. “Are you sure? You look pretty tired.”
“I’m not tired; I’m exhausted. But I can find Simon’s Town.” As I was talking, I was trying to follow the highway signs. “We angle east around the main part of the city and then follow the roads south. If we reach the end of the continent, we’ve gone too far.”
We eventually did arrive in Simon’s Town, a quaint historical suburb of Cape Town that occupies part of a spaghettilike strip of land squeezed tightly between False Bay and the great hulking monolith that is Table Mountain. We also found, as we tried motel after motel, that there were no rooms to be had at the height of the storm. When we eventually did find a vacancy, it turned out to be nicer as well as more reasonably priced than any from which we had earlier been turned away. The fact that the South African Rand was about eleven to the U.S. dollar at that time boosted our spirits as well. Oblivious to hunger, the storm raging around us, and with poor prospects of seeing much of anything else that night, we collapsed gratefully onto our beds.
A cloud-streaked morning brought breakfast, conversation with the hotel’s amiable and informative owner, gorgeous views out over the harbor and the bay, and the ironic news that by sheer fortuitous coincidence the boat on which we were to go out that morning just happened to leave from the dock at the base of the hotel. If we had found and stayed at the hotel back in Cape Town where a room had been reserved for us, we would have had to get back in our car and drive clear across town in order to embark on the next part of our journey. Having crapped out all the previous night, we had at the last moment and wholly through good luck inadvertently rolled a winner.
Maybe you’ve heard of Air Jaws, or seen the shows of that name on the Discovery Channel. In South Africa’s False Bay, on the other side of the continental spine from the city of Cape Town, it was discovered some years ago that great white sharks regularly leap out of the water in pursuit of Cape fur seals, their favorite prey. It was there that Ron and I had decided to conclude our monthlong trek across the country in hopes of glimpsing this extraordinary predatory display.
Arrangements had been made in advance with Chris Fallows, the naturalist and photographer who had made the first serious studies of this remarkable behavior, to spend a couple of days with him and his fiancée (now wife) Monique as they pursued their efforts to document the sharks’ activities. As with any animal behavior, we knew there was no guarantee we would see anything, even though it was the appropriate season for the sharks to be feeding.
I was prepared to be disappointed. In New Guinea, I once spent time at one of the world’s foremost shore-diving facilities and saw practically nothing.