With two oceans, the refreshing Atlantic and tropical Indian meeting, South Africa picks up way more swells than most countries and there is always an offshore wind creating, perfectly clean waves somewhere. South Africans are also amongst the friendliest people in the World, with an unparalleled generosity and a largeness of spirit giving surf travellers a real warm welcome.
But South Africa isn’t just non stop swell with offshores, there’s more to this beautiful country than that and here are five things you probably didn’t know about The RSA:
1. There are penguins everywhere
Seriously it’s well weird. Penguins just cruising around the beaches, sunbathing etc. You’re not meant to cuddle them though apparently.
2. It’s cheaper to travel to than Indo
For real, when you consider the increasing cost of everything in very wealthy Indonesia, compared to the incredibly cheap price of living in relatively poor South Africa it works out cheaper to go there. I’ve done the math.
For example; when I arrived into Cape Town I went to the closest bar for some food and happened to have the most incredible fillet steak, fries and pint of dangerously Moorish IPA, which cost the grand total of £5. A fiver. (The place is called Tiger’s Milk in Muizenburg, highly recommended.) I also bought a sick brand spanking new Lost Sub Buggy for the equivalent of £220.
Compare this to when I arrived into Bali earlier this Summer and grabbed a burger and a coke from the airport, which was also a fiver and although pretty decent, not a touch on SA. I also went into an Al Merrick outlet in Kuta expecting to grab a bargain bomb, but the prices were pretty standard at around £400.
3. The food is next level
I wasn’t expecting the food to be as good as it is, everywhere. Whether it’s Ostritch steaks cooked on a Braii (BBQ used very frequently) a sandwich from a stall at a market, bag of biltong, full sit down meal, whatever, it’s all good. Like really really good.
4. It has the highest commercial bridge bungee jump in the World
Over 700 feet! Unfortunately / fortunately we arrived as they were closing. I was totally up for it…
5. It’s not full of sharks
Ha, only joking of course there are sharks in SA, everyone knows this but you have a 1 in 63 chance of dying from the flu and a 1 in 11 million chance of being killed by a shark. You are literally more likely to die from a falling coconut than get eaten by a shark. There is an average of only six incidents per year with only 15% being fatal. This equates to an average of one serious shark-inflicted injury every year, which along 2000 km of coastline from the Mozambique border to Cape Town isn’t too bad.
Compare this to Hawaii, a surfing paradise not known for shark attacks but still saw three attacks in 2015, 6 in 2014 and 14 in 2013 and South African waters grow more tempting…