It’s no wonder our forefathers named it the ‘Transkei’… loosely translated as ‘that place over that river’. It was a place so formidable and difficult to transverse yet alluring beautiful. Not much has changed since those days. Sure, now there’s a spiderweb of mud roads criss-crossing the landscape, which makes getting from A to B at least possible. The mystery of the Transkei still grips you. It’s almost surreal.

Deep green valleys carve their way through to cliffs that plummet into the sea, as if the hand of God came and tore away the shoreline. The Transkei is like something out of a Tolkien novel, a ‘Middle Earth’ of sorts complete with rolling mists that cloak its secrets. Even the trees grow strangely, twisted and battered by the wild winds and elements.

The Transkei ocean, not unlike the land, also has its own thing going on. It’s not at all like the Cape or Natal. The Transkei cliffs seem to give the sea an odd ‘bump’ even on calm days. The colour of the water is different, a ‘clean green’ gloom with an airy feeling to it that only adds to the adventure and craziness of this phenomenal place.

Just the other day I watched a guy fill up his booties with water, walk up the beach and rinse his feet off with the water in each bootie before putting them on. I have been shore diving for as long as I can remember and there I was learning something new, I had always been the guy looking for a rock pool to rinse my feet in.

When spearfishing you are just never too old to learn new tricks, so we thought we would nail down a few basics in this edition. Sure, this is how we do it on the KZN North Coast and there are probably a bunch of guys from the Cape no doubt, who will have a completely different approach. That’s fine as long as they share the ‘love’ and let us know what works for them..

A little while back we were having a discussion on the USM forum on the importance of correctly powered speargun rubbers, and the effects on accuracy and penetration etc. Then out of left field Corry chirps something along the lines that everything we had discussed was useless unless the spear was sharp. Not only did he have a good point, but it also got me thinking on a number of other aspects that dramatically affect accuracy, penetration and more.