Hakk-ak-ak-kaw-chiirrrp. My wake-up call at Rocktail Bay Lodge comes from a bush-baby defending his territory in the trees around my hut. From my bed, the only other sound that reaches me is the crashing Indian Ocean surf as it hits the beach a hundred yards away. It is 5am, very dark outside and surprisingly cool. Only the promise of a dawn drive along the vast and empty beaches of Maputaland, close to South Africa's border with Mozambique, makes getting up so early seem worthwhile.
I have come here to dive in a marine reserve that has been off limits to scuba divers for many years. They say that the offshore reefs here offer the best diving in Africa, and that the reserve is one of the world's most unspoilt marine ecosystems. I am sceptical. South African diving conditions are often characterised by rough seas, water temperatures on the cold side and fish life that has been devastated by spear fishermen.
Rocktail Bay lies inside the Maputaland Coastal Forest Reserve, high up on South Africa's northern KwaZulu-Natal coastline. For 25 miles in either direction there are no other lodges or hotels. The bush lodge is tiny, just 11 wooden chalets raised on stilts into the tree canopy. This is not big-game territory - endemic birds and small vervet monkeys are the most visible signs of Africa - but Rocktail Bay's five-mile beach is a soul-expanding stretch of golden sand separated from the forest by sand dunes 100ft high.
Just getting to the diving centre is like going on safari. Carefully hidden in the forest and invisible from the beach, Rocktail Lodge is accessible only with a 4 x 4 vehicle. The diving centre has been built some way from the lodge, closer to the launching site for the boat. Although the forest lodge has been here for 10 years, scuba diving has been permitted in the marine reserve only recently.
In the old apartheid days the Parks Board took a military attitude to conservation. As far as they were concerned, the fewer people who were allowed into an area the better. Now, under the auspices of the KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife Service, things have changed. A private company - Wilderness Safaris - operates just one small diving boat within the reserve, but KZN Wildlife keeps a watchful eye on the operation.
Dean Morton, assistant manager at Rocktail Bay and my dive buddy for the day, drives me along the bush track to the diving centre. He is a keen birdwatcher and stops the vehicle to point out red-bodied Natal robins and olive green sunbirds. From there it is another 10-minute drive over the dunes and on to the beach - a launching site chosen by KZN Wildlife within sight of the ranger's station.
Dean explains that no one is allowed to drive on the beach for two hours either side of high tide. "The leatherback turtles nest at the high-water mark - so we must never drive over that area - we time our launch according to the turtles' movements, not the divers'." Fair enough. Hence the early start.
The surfline looks threatening, and the breakers are big enough to guarantee a bumpy ride offshore. I begin to wonder if I am in for a taste of what South Africans call "combat diving", a white-knuckle ride through the surf and a speeding underwater drift in a raging current. Our semi-inflatable "RIB" negotiates the breakers with ease, and as we hit smooth water I am introduced to Darryl Smith, a former skipper for the Natal Sharks Board, a man who knows a thing or two about the fish here.
He scans the waves incessantly as he navigates, nodding at the horizon occasionally, muttering about milkfish and king mackerel feeding at the surface. A few hundred yards away an African fish eagle stands sentinel on the shore, watching the sea even more expertly.
Suddenly, Darryl cuts the engines, and we rock gently in the north-easterly swell. "Whales," he says, tilting his chin to the south.
I scan the water expecting to see a distant shadow in the sea, but they are very close: rolling black backs glistening in the morning light, a flash of tail flukes and then two smaller shapes hugging close against the other two. A pair of female humpback whales, each accompanied by last year's calf, and now en route to the calm waters of the Mozambique channel to give birth to this year's offspring. They pass within 50 feet of our small dive boat. Pough-pough, we hear them snort, blowing spray away from their blow-holes as they plough on, resolute in their course.
Soon afterwards it is my turn to enter the water. Dean and I roll backwards off the dinghy and swim down towards the reef. Darryl's nephew, Clive, is leading the dive and he carries a buoy line attached to a surface marker so that the boat can follow our course. To protect the reef, no anchoring is allowed here. I can understand why.
Mushroom corals and brain corals, table corals and finger corals cover the reef flats in a subtle tapestry of colours and textures.
A dark shape moves along the seabed and Clive beckons us nearer. A female green turtle is feeding on a patch of algae. She is oblivious to our presence, allowing us within inches of her face as she tears at her meal. We follow the edge of the reef as the current pulls us along at a gentle pace. I spot a secretive
longnose hawkfish camouflaged against the silvery-white fronds of a branching coral. The fish is ghostly pale, its body decorated with a tracery of scarlet lines drawn finely as if with a pin.
Another fish is shadowing us. A giant grouper, or potato bass, more than four feet long and weighing 150 lb. Its mouth is twisted, scarred by some past underwater battle. The dive centre has nicknamed it Tyson, and divers are warned that he likes to creep up on people and occasionally press his face against your mask.
I keep an eye on Tyson's movements by glancing behind me now and then. Fast game fish, visitors to the reef, swim in from the deep. A kingfish, a green jobfish, two large king mackerel and scores of chubb. These are the fish that anglers would like to catch. Black sweetlips and yellow snapper, coral trout and lemonfish pass in front of me like extras in a Hollywood biblical epic.
I see several species that are new to me, including the large Natal knifejaw, its front teeth jutting outwards like an ugly teenager. The small charismatic species are here too. A host of anthias, like a cloud of dainty goldfish, cluster above the coral facing into the current where they can pluck food particles from the stream. They are skittish, a shimmering cloud of colour bewildering to the eye and ready to dart for safety at the first sign of trouble.
Here and there I spot another fish, similar in colour to the anthias, but with a body twice as long. The effect is as if a stretch limo has appeared in a speeding queue of traffic on a six-lane highway. These are Midas blennies, even brighter than the anthias.
I happen to be interested in corals and sponges. Many divers are not, they want to see pretty fish, they like to dive on shipwrecks or seek the thrill of an encounter with large predators, especially sharks. I too enjoy such dives, but for me it is the reef habitat with its myriad colours and small enigmatic organisms that startles and astounds.
It is this habitat that provides the fish and the rest of the food chain with its base. I focus on a small coral head, fingers of hard growth, each encircled with a bright yellow wedding ring of colour. Small brittle stars - relatives of starfish - have curled their arms around the coral.
To obtain a better view of the coral crevasse I perform an underwater headstand, my face a few inches from the nooks and crannies in the reef. There, next to the brittle stars are a pair of shrimps - the larger fatter-bodied female and her half-size mate raising his pincers in defence of the matriarch. Their bodies are transparent, splotched with white patches of colour like glass ornaments on to which a careless decorator has flicked some paint.
Too soon, it is time to leave. My dive computer is warning me that I have just a minute of safe bottom-time remaining. Almost an hour has gone by and yet I feel I have barely seen what the reef has to offer. We climb towards the shadow of the dinghy's hull, hanging beneath the boat for a safety stop for several minutes at 15 feet as an extra precaution against decompression sickness.
A turtle swims towards us from the deep, perhaps the same female we saw earlier. I take another look at the edge of the reef and there like a wraith is a giant guitar shark, easily recognised by its distinctive flattened head and high dorsal fin. It moves off into the deeper water, hugging the sand as it goes.
This reef system is special: I was wrong to doubt it. I have several more days of diving here, and I am already wondering what the next day will bring. Tomorrow's tide will turn a little later, and I can stay in bed until 5.30, but I won't need the bush babies to wake me this time.
Rock basics
Tim Ecott travelled with Southern Africa specialists Rainbow Tours (020 7226 1004,
www.rainbowtours.co.uk), which offers five nights at Rocktail Bay from £1,375. This includes all meals, guided walks and beach activities as well as flights from London (midweek departures) on South African Airways with connections to Richards Bay and overland transfers. Alternatively, you can drive from Johannesburg (seven hours by road).
Diving at Rocktail Bay Lodge costs 250 Rand (£15) for the first dive, R200 (£12) thereafter. Diving should be booked with Wilderness Safaris because of the small number of divers who can be admitted to the marine reserve each day.
Visit
www.wilderness-safaris.com. Water temperatures range between 73F (23C) and 80F (27C) - warmest November-April.
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