Trip Report · 13 Jul 2017
The easiest way to answer this question is to tell you my own story.
It starts with my cousin Steffen — a bit of a rebellious teenager at the time — who worked for SA Breweries, where a dive club had been started by my now life partner, Colwin.
I wasn't a natural. If anything, I dived more like a drowning duck than anything else. What kept me going at first was fairly pragmatic — I'd already paid for a combined Open Water and Advanced package, and, if I'm honest, there were a few attractive single divers in the group who kept things interesting.
Because that's really the truth of it: diving itself wasn't the hook. It was the people, and the good times.
My first real dive trip was to Mozambique, just as the border had reopened — much to my parents' alarm. The trip itself became part of the story: a night-time convoy through loose beach sand, arriving in the early morning to crack a beer and promptly get stuck in the sand near the border post.
Camp at Malongane was primitive back then — we were pioneers, really. The “skippers” were tractor drivers, and there was only one reef we could dive, called Breadloaf. I don't remember many details, but I remember it being spectacular.
What made it unforgettable wasn't just the diving. It was the whole rhythm of it — daytime dives, afternoons exploring, communal cooking and music around the campfire late into the night, moonlit walks along an empty beach, and new friendships forming along the way.