That waves and warps through clear shallow water.
Yearning wonder at all the beauty that is out there.
But it is vibrant and real and alive,
a whole new world more fun.
Durban's latest tourist attraction is an
aquatic wonder world of thrilling theme parks,
breathtaking marine life and dreamy underwater adventure.
"If you get eaten by a shark don't come crying to me,"
I said, blushing furiously as I realized immediately what I'd said.
If you substitute 'fall off that bike and break your neck'
for 'get eaten by a shark' I might have been my father, 25 years ago.
Still, kids will be kids.
Or maybe boring grown-ups will just be boring grownups.
I was talking to Eid, my eight-year-old nephew,
who was clambering on the low wooden fence
surrounding the surface of the shark tank at
uShaka Marine World, the new and rather thrilling watery theme park
that opened this year at Durban's Point.
Formerly the seedy and seamier part of town,
The Point is being renovated with restaurants,
sundowner bars and now uShaka;
the world's fifth-largest marine park.
The municipality has invested R 735m in the expectation of
generating 1,5 million visitors in the first year.
None of which was of the slightest interest to Eid.
Eid wanted to see sharks.
“It's a bit unsafe”
said a woman pushing a baby in a pram.
“Your son could fall in.”
“A couple of bites and he'll learn his lesson”
I assured her, trying to sound like a parent.
She gave me a peculiar look as I dragged- Eid
towards the Phantom Ship.
uShaka is actually three theme parks in one.
First there is the Village Walk retail section,
a kind of Lost City by the sea without the casino.
Themed to suggest a Zulu village
(with what is proudly described as 'the biggest thatched roof in the country').
Village Walk is the kind of large-scale retail heaven
the rich and famous would feel at home in,
with metal Zulushield light fittings
and banisters shaped like geckos.
The second park is Wet 'n Wild, with its water-rides and super-tubes,
but it was an uncharacteristically chilly day in Durban so we skipped
Wet 'n Wild.
Besides, there are no sharks there
and Eid had only one thing on his mind.
Entrance to Sea World,
the third and best part of the uShaka complex,
is through the Phantom Ship,
an extraordinary 80m replica of a 1920s cargo steamer whose hull I had to physically touch before.
I would believe it wasn't an actual ship driven ashor by an Indian Ocean tempest and rusting in stately retirement amid the palm trees.
The upper decks and stern are
home to a variety of restaurants
with views into the tanks,
but we raced down the staircase,
down below the water line,
down to where the fishes live.
It is wonderful down there.
The aquarium spreads out through tunnels and ghostly blue chambers.
Atmospheric maritime sounds play over the PA -
gurgles and creaks and moans, morse-code transmissions,
distant eerie music
as though from some spectral Marie Celeste.
The galleries resemble the holds of ships-
you walk between coiled ropes and hawsers,
cargo in wooden boxes,
rivets in the grey-steel walls and water-tight doors,
and you don't have to be eight to dream you are in a sunken ship,
saved by a trapped air bubble,
looking out through the portholes at the bottom of the ocean.
EID's eyes were wide.
He stared for hours at the eels and the octopus,
and for days at the turds in their large tank,
those wise old men of the sea
who always look as though they're taking their morning dip before retiring to the nearest teashop to smoke pipes and play dominoes.
Eid stared agog at the devil fire fish -
the gauzy, red-white-and-black phantoms often found haunting actual wrecks.
Their tank is designed like a flooded cabin on an old liner -
they hang against the walls and furniture like hellish Christmas decorations in the Bermuda Triangle.
But it was the sharks that held Eid,
as they hold us all.
uShaka has the largest collection of sharks in the southern hemisphere,
even after the unfortunate recent events
when a number died in one of the tanks
after teething problems with algae control and oxygenation. yap.
One tank holds the reef sharks-
fast, darty, nippy, like terriers on a Sunday walk-
but it is the big fellows that hold a dark fascination.
We stood in the blue gloom,
staring out at the heavy solemnity of the Zambezi and Ragged-Tooth.
Eid held his breath and his eyes shone darkly.
Finally we made our way up to the light like returning deep-sea divers,
not rushing up too fast for fear of the bends.
Outside, Sea World is a sprawling series of interconnected lagoons
- the surfaces of the larger tanks -
winding between green grass and walkways and palms.
We wandered to the penguin enclosure, where the birds stood dolefully like London commuters at a station.
Then to the 1 200-seat canvas-topped auditorium for the dolphin show.
When I was Eid's age,
I used to visit the old dolphinarium to watch Gambit,
the world's largest captive dolphin.
He's still there, still breathtakingly massive,
still displacing vast amounts of water
onto the first 10 rows of the auditorium,
to the amusement of everyone sitting further back.
Of course we sat in the front row.
There is something about an eight-year-old cry of delight when he is unexpectedly drenched by a dolphin that simply should not be resisted.
Besides, we were going to get even wetter.
Best of all at Sea World is the opportunity to snorkel in the coral lagoon -
the huge tank with reef fishes and man-made coral, fronting through a glass window onto the reef-shark tank.
R40 affords 45 minutes of snorkeling
and there is no better way to introduce a small child to the giddy delights of the marine world.
Supervision and mandatory buoyancy vests cut out safety worries
Within mere seconds you are drifting weightless
in a wonder world of angelfish and triggerfish,
parrotfish and rays.
Of all the modern innovations that would have enlivened my own youth,
it is the snorkeling lagoon I envy the most.
It is designed to resemble the reef around a desert Indian Ocean Island
where pirates have scuttled their treasure.
On the seabed there are chests overflowing with jewels and doubloons, replica ivory tusks and gold ingots strewn across the white sandy bottom, and even, for some reason
a World War II jeep rusting away in sunny silence.
It was a dream, down there.
I bobbed and breathed and watched Eid,
while he giggled underwater at the fish brushing against his feet.
He would have stayed there all day and through the night too.
For Eid it was a new world,
a day his horizons were not only broadened but deepened,
when his eyes lit with the light that dances on the sea,
that waves and warps through clear shallow water.
I doubt he will ever get over it.
For me it was a day of being eight all over again
and rediscovering that aching,
yearning wonder at all the beauty that is out
To compare uShaka Marine World to the V&A Aquarium is like comparing Durban and Cape Town themselves -
some parts are a little tacky, even kitsch.
Sophisticates may smirk and snoot.
But it is vibrant and real and alive,
and it quickens the pulse and
inspires daydreams far more than Cape Town ever does.
Cape Town may be more elegant, more ethereal
but Durban is, quite frankly,
A whole world more fun.
« return.