From: "jon mellor" <rtwjon@hotmail.com>

Date: February 18, 2004 5:02:34 AM EST

Subject: shark diving

Hi everyone,

Well I'm still having a bit of culture shock now that I'm back into a 1st world country. I've been in South Africa for 'bout a week now and I'm finally starting to get used to plentiful food, ATMs, roads, payphones etc... It's almost like the United States here! Although it is a very very odd place. It is by far the most segregated society I've ever seen, wealth is totally dependent on race. Pretty much every white person I see is rich and nearly every black person I meet it poor and there is very little mixing of races. You hardly ever see white people and black people together... There is still a ton of racism it's really quite sad listening to some of these guys talk...

So far I haven't done all that much. I had my heart set on SCUBA diving at Sodwana bay, which was most excellent! The only problem is that it took a week to get there and for the weather to clear. There was an amazing variety of different kinds of fish and coral it was totally like an aquarium! We even saw turtles, stingrays and a shark! Quite an amazing experience!

Right now I'm in Durban, tomorrow morning I'm headed along the coast to a place called Coffee bay on the Wild Coast, it's supposed to be beautiful, I can't wait to spend a few days on the beach! After that I'll make my way slowly to Cape Town where I'll spend about a week before I meet up w/ my dad in India on march 8th.

Victoria Falls was amazing. It was the most amazing natural wonder I've ever seen! It's about 1.7km long and 100m high, an amazing amount of water. It's over twice the size of Niagara for comparison and much much more beautiful too, especially along the Zambezi river where I went white water rafting which was a blast!

Well I guess that's about it for now. Hope everyone is doing well I certainly am!