The Wild I See

As the tugs pulled the SA Agulhas away from the quayside I waved goodbye to my loved ones and stared out at the vast expanse of sea that lay ahead. ‘I won’t be seeing this place for more than a year!’ I thought to myself, acknowledging the strangeness of such a concept. A few hundred metres out to sea the feeling of adventure had already kicked in, as diving cormorants, porpoising seals, jumping dolphins and a lonesome sunfish filled the calm waters of the cape. The SA Agulhas isn’t the fastest of ships so the coastline stretching from Camps Bay to Cape Point took all the remaining hours of daylight to pass by, my eyes picking out some familiar spots; the Sentinel near Hout Bay, the BOSS 400 wreck off Sandy Bay, the crayfish factory at Witsands and all those beautiful beaches in the reserve. The last glimpse I shared with civilisation came from the haze of lights emanating from within the arms of False Bay; a lighthouse at the end of each warning ships, like ours, of their extremi...

I arrived in Zanzibar after backpacking my way through Malawi and Tanzania, largely undecided as to where I was heading next. During a walk on the beach close to where I was staying in Nungwi, the northernmost village on the island, I stumbled upon Mnarani Turtle Conservation Pond – a natural lagoon stretching over a hundred metres inland, lined with coral rock and mangrove trees. I met two women outside the aquarium, both volunteers who had organised their experience through Global Vision International (GVI), a UK-based organisation with volunteer projects all over the globe. After being introduced to a few of the locaIs who manage the aquarium, I offered my physical assistance and little understanding of marine ecology in exchange for a place to stay. They put me up in a banda (hut) right outside the aquarium, only a few metres from the beach. For the first few days I gobbled up turtle facts so that I could act as a guide for any tourists that visited. The rest of m...