Below

What is it? One degree? Minus two?

Somewhere in the freeze-my-butt-off zone, that’s for sure.

We’ve been in the water just a few minutes and I am shivering. A typical Durban-born ninny, spoiled by a childhood spent in the Indian Ocean. I’ve been assured (and had this corroborated by a meteorological website) that it’s actually a balmy 13 degrees. Celsius. It strikes me that numbers are meaningless when it comes to physical experience. My blood is warm and I feel the cold.

Still, I suck down the sense of rising anxiety, slough off the shivers, prime myself for the joyous act of underwater discovery; it is, after all, a beautiful day in Simon’s Town and the little cove we’re snorkelling in is presumably full  of wonders waiting to be glimpsed  just below the surface.

Besides, we’re in good hands, being guided by conservationists from Shark Warrior Adventures, an eco-exploration outfit based on Seaforth Beach.

I recall my water-baby friend Pippa’s consoling words: ‘A cold internal fire will keep you warm; your body just needs to remember how to withstand the cold.’ Apparently, withstanding the cold just requires a bit of Zen-like mastery. Mind over matter.

It works. For a while, at least. But I do find myself wondering if I should resort to that old scuba trick and wee in my wetsuit, put a little bit of warm liquid between myself and the cold Atlantic.

I hang in there, though, because our guide, Terry, is showing us one curious creature after another. Between the gigantic kelp fronds, it is indeed another universe. Fish dart this way and that, sunlight glinting off their silvery scales, some with vibrant patterns in splendid colours, others designed to blend in with the green kelp or the dark rocks. When Terry shows us a spiny starfish and lets us hold it, I feel it shaping itself to grip gently around my fingers and I’m in awe.

At one point, I turn to face a little patch of beach and mentally convince a pair of penguins to join me in the water. True as anything, they hop into the water and swim to within metres of my face. I almost forget to clear my snorkel.

I tell myself that if these little birds can withstand the cold for hours at a stretch, I can manage for a while longer. Surely? ‘See the penguin,’ I tell myself. ‘Be the penguin!’

Of course, my newfound spirit animals have their own agenda and have more important things to do than help me regulate my internal thermostat. Without warning, they duck below the surface  and are heading towards their fish hunting grounds far out to sea.

Things get even more exciting, though, when Terry signals our group to rally in his direction. Half of us are thinking this will be the moment when we meet some distant cousin of the mollusc who starred in My Octopus Teacher. The rest of us assume we’re about to see the sharks Terry is trying to find. When we catch up with him, though, the thrilled expression on his face tells me there’s something altogether more unusual below the surface.

I dip down, my lower jaw now chattering uncontrollably from the cold. There’s a large shadow-like something down there, dead still, but somehow too perfectly shaped, too thin and flat to be a rock. And then it moves, glides, starts to soar. It flaps its enormous wings, drifting like some alien spacecraft set adrift among the stars. As it takes off through the water, streaks of white on its underside become visible. It is utterly gorgeous. And reasonably deadly if it should lift its tail – a sting ray, Terry tells us, one of the biggest he’s ever seen.

We try to swim after it for a while, watching it glide effortlessly between the rocks and seaweed, and then it disappears.

I stick my head above the surface, feeling my heart racing with excitement; seeing this creature in the wild like this had felt otherworldly, like I’d been exploring another planet.

Suddenly I hear one of the other snorkelers, someone who surfs and dives regularly, turning to Terry and shouting out: ‘Do you mind if we start heading back? I’m getting really cold!’

Only then do I remember my body, as though I’d temporarily left it behind. I’m jolted back into reality, and realise that my knuckles are white. I am managing, but very cold and it’s a relief when I finally walk out of the water back on to Seaforth Beach. Even after someone helps peel the wetsuit off my body, I am still shivering and shaking like the Durban ninny I am.

But at least I haven’t peed in my wetsuit.