There are many palatable, and some unpalatable, ways to pass a layday in Jeffreys Bay. You can visit the nearby lion park. You can go diving with great whites, immersed in a steel cage just off a seal colony. You can bungee jump off a bridge into a gorge over a river. You can disappear an hour or two down the coast in search of semi-secret and inevitably sharky as hell waves, where territorial locals might threaten your well-being, car and possessions.

All these activities, it should be noted, carry with them a certain element of danger. Which is perhaps why the South African version of the TV show Fear Factor (one of the more unpalatable ways to pass the time) feels the need to up the ante somewhat. On the episode your correspondent recently caught, contestants were required to consume sheep and bull’s testicles. Whoever could eat the most in a set time limit was deemed the winner. This is every bit as hideous as it sounds, even with an attractive salad served on the side. I am not sure how these large, bulbous, rubbery-looking testes were prepared, but the well-muscled dark-skinned gentleman who apparently asked for his rare appeared to have made a crucial tactical error. As he bit into his first bull’s ball it spewed a bloody red gelatinous substance that had viewers in our household audibly gagging, not to mention the contestant himself, who appeared to be on the verge of some sort of convulsive fit. It was like watching a train wreck, unable to turn away from the horror and gore.

You may have already gathered from all this that the swell outlook for the J-Bay contest window is not looking so flash. Animated discussion has been centred around the choice of format - the old, four-day, double-chance first round format, or the new cut-throat three day format. With only three days of over-head waves currently on the radar, the odds are leaning towards ruthlessness, despite many of the surfers’ avowed distaste for the abridged version.

In the meantime, many surfers have been disappearing down the coast, returning with varied tales of thumping beachbreaks and standup barrels at venues which shall have to remain nameless. No lesser luminaries than Mr Slater himself and good bud Taylor Knox were apparently shooed from one sensitive location for arriving with a cameraman in tow. Here at the charming beachfront abode known as Khaya Zinza, surfers have been relaxing with wives, engaging in touristic activities such as the aforementioned lion park, training at a nearby gym, stickering boards, preparing healthy meals and generally behaving in a way so calm, well-adjusted and reasonable as to make a resident journalist’s life a living hell.

Mercifully, Bobby Martinez grew so bored yesterday he seized a pair of clippers and shaved his coarse black locks into a striking Jonah Lomu style forehead brow, much to the horror of his hairdresser wife Cleo. The unusual do resembles nothing more closely than a large Groucho Marx moustache that has mysteriously migrated to the top of his forehead. A frosty mood prevailed in the Martinez household as a result. “That is the most fucked up thing I have ever seen,” housemate Fanning observed. “Yeah, but in a good way, right?” the ever optimistic Martinez countered, beaming and flashing an eager thumbs up. “When it grows a bit longer I can just comb it back perfectly,” Bobby claimed in his defense.

I can also faithfully report that, far from any mounting world title race jitters or tension, the top surfers all appear to get along swimmingly. There is an almost universal chuminess that seems to belie the competitive nature of their careers, apart from a growing testiness with a certain South American contender, whose increasingly extravagant and jubliant claims of every wave ridden and heat won are beginning to rub nerves.

In other exciting news, Kai Otton is reading new age guru Eckhart Tolle’s latest guide to enlightenment, “A New World.” A regular game of footy evolves most afternoons on the lawn out front of the houses dotted around Supertubes, though no consensus has been reached on the preferred code, which somewhat limits the chances of a coherent game. Two rugby balls were punctured yesterday by particularly nasty thorns, which may be a sign that the vastly superior code of AFL should be adopted. And Dayan Neve has warned visitors to the lion park against walking with a limp. In the wild, of course, hunting animals seek weakened or injured prey so the sight of any beast with a limp sends them into a salivating frenzy. One visitor decided to test the theory, with the safety of an electric fence separating him from the ravenous beasts. As he did his best hunchback of Notre Dame impersonation up and down the perimeter fence, he could only watch in awe as the crazed animals rose and charged as one and threw themselves upon the electric fence, only to be hurled back by a high voltage shock. Hours of callous amusement at the expense of the former Kings of the Jungle, now caged and tamed as tourist fodder. If the waves don’t pick up soon, by the end of two weeks, the surfers here might be beginning to feel the same way.