NATURAL high
izarrely, it started with a winter trip B to Rio. Floating in the womb-warm waters off Ipanema Beach, I reluctantly conceded that Rio trumped Cape Town, not because it is more beautiful (a close run thing) but because it is lapped by an ocean you can spend hours lolling about in rather than beating a retreat before your knees get wet, your ankles aching from the cold. It seemed such a wicked irony to be returning to my own seaside city, unable to swim.
Soon after this I chanced upon . Charting the transformative experiences of Craig Foster and Ross Frylinck in the Cape’s kelp forests, is an extraordinary photographic documentation of an equally extraordinary wilderness, populated with creatures as surreal as any I have encountered snorkelling in the Galapagos or off the east coast of Africa. As astonishing as the biodiversity spawned by the Cape’s cold waters was the fact that the authors chose to dive was a game-changer for me: not only was the frigid ocean rich in treasures, but it could be explored wearing nothing but a swimsuit and snorkel. If I could just learn to deal with the cold.
