I know I'm late to the party, but for anyone searching for this: we did a safari in Tanzania (amazing!) in December, then went to Mafia Island (Also Tanzania - fly through Dar Es Salaam) Diving in Mafia was fine, lots of octopuses - muck diving was great if you like that type of diving (I love it) - lots of seahorses, nudies, small squids (big group), small frog fish, big frog fish, ghost pipe fish and so on. In winter months (nov-mar I think), you can also snorkel with whale sharks - our kids loved it, even though seas were a bit rough.
Safari and Diving
- Thread starter boulderjohn
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WeRtheOcean
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Cute picture of the lionesses being playful!
MrBigfins
Contributor
Thinking of doing a safari and some diving including great whites in 2021. Any suggestions? Thinking August? Thanks
For those of you that have done the Safari and then gone on to do Diving, did you bring your own gear? My wife and I are heading to Tanzania/Pemba later in the year for 9 days of Photo Safari across Tanzania and then 7 nights on Pemba for diving. We are trying to figure out how to get all of the Dive Gear, Camera, and Underwater Camera gear packed into something that would easily travel from lodge to lodge. We are leaning towards just renting the dive gear in Pemba.
any suggestions?
any suggestions?
Dan
Contributor
When I did it in 2013, I stored my dive gear bag in Safari operator office and picked it up when I was ready to head out to Zanzibar. When I did it in 2014, I stored my dive gear bag in Kilimanjaro hiking operator storage facility and picked it up when I was ready to head out to Pemba. Both times worked great. I just don't trust rental gears when it comes to diving.
We had our hotel in Arusha store our dive gear, then we had the hotel in Dar es Salam store our safari gear. One thing to remember is the baggage allowance on the smaller planes - most have 15 kg inclusive of hand luggage!
SanibelDiver
Registered
Thanks for the feedback all. I will look into possibly storing our gear with our Luggage while on Safari with the Travel Agent, though I suspect we will probably just rent gear.
Depending on how much money you can spend, there are several options. To me the best remains South Africa with Sardines Run and/or Protea Banks sharks dives + safari in Kruger Park or Umfolozi and other similar places if you just stay close to the Sardines Run area
In Kruger you can self drive and this makes the price half than Tanzania or Kenya
I have been only to South Africa though
In Kruger you can self drive and this makes the price half than Tanzania or Kenya
I have been only to South Africa though
A bit late on the reply here, but when people talk of diving Africa, they often talk about the places you mention. Nothing wrong with those (although having worked in zanibar I can agree the diving is good on a macro level, but otherwise fished out), but there is a lot on offer in SOUTH Africa too 
Starting at the tip, we have Cape Town which in itself is a great destination to visit. Here you can do some cold water diving with the ellusive 7 gill cow (as I like to say DINASAUR) shark. Then you have Plettenberg Bay which also has great diving from what I hear ( I haven'tt dived there though). Then we get Protea Banks which is the deeper, current filled wonderland of pelagics. Sharks galore.
Just a wee bit away from that is Aliwal Shoal which if you google will give you a good idea of what it offers, but it is a mix between the usual marine critters and pelagics + sharks etc. A wee bitt further is Durban if you want to do some deep wreck diving.
Then up the coast we get to our warm ground which is Sodwana Bay. This is still the top place in my books. 100's upon 100's of species and diverse marine life as well as pelagics on the bigger/deeper dives, but you never know. I have rolled off the boar at stringer which is at the tip (below) of 2mile reef and seen a Manta. We have also done quarter mile which is literally just off the beach and spent 50mins watching 4 massive and some gestating raggie sharks. Sodwana really has everything as well as technical deeper diving which if you are lucky is where you can spot the coelacanth.
Just up from Sodwana is Rocktail Bay. Believed to be like Sodwana on steroids, although I haven't personally dived there yet.
And then just across the border, literally, you get Ponta which is just as good as Sodwana and sometimes even better. Tropical, tons of species, and everything from nudi's the size of a quarter of a rice grain up to hammerheads, tiger sharks, potato bass etc etc.
This is just a brief run down, but there is tons of stuff to see and place to go based on what you want out of it.
Chat to me if you are ever interested as I work with a dive centre here and we run regular trips so I can point you in the right direction Same goes for the "safari" side.
Starting at the tip, we have Cape Town which in itself is a great destination to visit. Here you can do some cold water diving with the ellusive 7 gill cow (as I like to say DINASAUR) shark. Then you have Plettenberg Bay which also has great diving from what I hear ( I haven'tt dived there though). Then we get Protea Banks which is the deeper, current filled wonderland of pelagics. Sharks galore.
Just a wee bit away from that is Aliwal Shoal which if you google will give you a good idea of what it offers, but it is a mix between the usual marine critters and pelagics + sharks etc. A wee bitt further is Durban if you want to do some deep wreck diving.
Then up the coast we get to our warm ground which is Sodwana Bay. This is still the top place in my books. 100's upon 100's of species and diverse marine life as well as pelagics on the bigger/deeper dives, but you never know. I have rolled off the boar at stringer which is at the tip (below) of 2mile reef and seen a Manta. We have also done quarter mile which is literally just off the beach and spent 50mins watching 4 massive and some gestating raggie sharks. Sodwana really has everything as well as technical deeper diving which if you are lucky is where you can spot the coelacanth.
Just up from Sodwana is Rocktail Bay. Believed to be like Sodwana on steroids, although I haven't personally dived there yet.
And then just across the border, literally, you get Ponta which is just as good as Sodwana and sometimes even better. Tropical, tons of species, and everything from nudi's the size of a quarter of a rice grain up to hammerheads, tiger sharks, potato bass etc etc.
This is just a brief run down, but there is tons of stuff to see and place to go based on what you want out of it.
Chat to me if you are ever interested as I work with a dive centre here and we run regular trips so I can point you in the right direction
Same goes for the "safari" side.Similar threads
