We went with our good friends, Joe and Tori Bollard and Rick Kemp (Alex Kemp stayed back and watched all 8 of the Whipperman and Kemp kids), to Port Lincoln, South Australia and then took a 3 hour boat ride out to the Neptune Islands with Calypso Charters to swim with the great white sharks. Our tour including the cage dive with the sharks was $495/person.
We redeemed 20,000 American Airlines miles and ~$41 in taxes for the round trip economy class tickets on Qantas that took us from Perth to Port Lincoln (with a quick connection through Adelaide). It was a great use of AA miles as the tickets were going for $1,138 each when we booked them.
We stayed 2 nights at the YHA Backpackers Lodge in Port Lincoln for $65.00 ($16.25/night per person…it's normally $32.50/night per person, but YHA gives you a 2 for 1 if you book a cage dive with Calypso Charters). The girls were nervous and highly skeptical of us staying in this place (mostly worried about cleanliness and bed bugs), but all fears were laid to rest and we were in for a positive surprise upon arrival. The hostel is immaculate and spacious. We only shared our community room with 1 other person on the first night and with 6 people the 2nd night. We hung out in the community rooms both nights and Rick was able to catch the Aussie Rules football semifinal one night while we played games. You can't really beat the price and it's good value for money.
We had some time to kill when we arrived in Port Lincoln, so we took our rental car out to some of the local beaches and sand dunes and explored a bit before heading to dinner. We learned that Port Lincoln has the highest number of millionaires per capita in Australia due to the lucrative tuna (pronounced "choo-nah") industry.
The YHA even gave us a deal on dinner at The Pier ($12.00 for a giant chicken or beef schnitzel with pepper gravy, steak fries, a salad, and a drink…which is more than half off the menu price). That may not sound like a good deal, but, in Australia, it's hard to beat.
Calypso Charters picked us up from the hostel at 6:20 am and returned us back at about 6:30 pm. They took care all the meals (breakfast, morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea) and we could buy cold Diet Coke's all day long for $1.00/can (we had about 30 between the 5 of us). Soft drinks are usually $3-4/can in this type of setting here in Australia, so we felt pretty good about getting them for a buck a piece. The food was plentiful and much better than expected. We brought along some card games (mostly played Monopoly Deal) and spent the majority of the 3 hour boat ride out to the Neptune Islands playing cards and having a good time. There were 30 people on our boat and there was only one cage that holds 6 people at a time. We signed up to be the group after lunch, so we watched the first 4 groups of 6 go before us and could see the great white sharks from the surface. We did get some great pictures and video from the surface as well as from the cage.
All in all, I think we saw 11 different great whites during the course of the day (3-4 while we were in the cage). The crew would tie tuna guts to a rope and throw it out in front of the cage to lure the sharks to a point where the people in the cage could get a good view. It was a pretty good system because the sharks kept swirling around the boat all day long and all of the 5 groups of 6 saw plenty of sharks while they were in the cage.
