You can feel it in the air - that slight shift in molecules, the scent of jasmine. In a few months, Camps Bay beach will be packed. Ice-cream vendors will lug their boxes across the sand. The sea will roll and lap, the water alluring, but only one or two brave souls will splash in the shallows. The ocean is kak-cold in the Cape.
However, throughout the year a handful of people enjoy plunging in. I have become one of them.
During my swims I've met a variety of people who immerse themselves for a range of reasons, from athletes of distinction - ice-swimmers Ryan Stramrood and Ram Barkai - to languid swimmers of near extinction.Some do it for the physical and mental challenge, others for a spiritual connection. "It gets me out of my mind and into my body. It's the best cure for depression and anxiety," says Vania Leonard.
The Russians and Scandinavians have done cold-water swimming for decades, hopping into ice holes after steaming in saunas. But in the past few years there has been a global surge in its popularity.
The British call it wild swimming, others refer to it as open-water or outdoor swimming. For South Africans, it's just pretty much swimming.
WINTER IN THE WATER
The Camps Bay Hot Chocolate Swimming Group meets every Sunday throughout the year. In winter, sea temperatures can drop to 10°C.
Founded by Barkai and Andrew Chin about 15 years ago, it has grown to about 600 members, although only a handful of die-hards swim in winter.
One of them is Alli Moals, a bearish man who prefers "bobbing" near the shore to hurrying across the bay. "It's meditation," he says. "I always loved swimming in cold water and swam in Muizenberg on my own."But my brother told me that for every piece of ocean the size of a rugby field, there would be one shark. I got scared. So when the beaches on the Atlantic were opened up after apartheid, I started swimming here and then my wife found this group and said I should join. She doesn't want me to swim alone."
And that's one of the rules of outdoor swimming: never swim alone. And never overestimate your abilities.
Arafat Gatabazi has become an open-water swimming legend in South Africa. In 2012, aged just 17, he fled the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and walked to Cape Town, crossing multiple borders.
He was taken in by a refuge for street children, where he took up swimming as an extramural activity. He proved to have a natural talent and after just 11 months, he completed the 7.5km Robben Island crossing. Since then, he has taken on many challenges, including an 8km swim around Cape Point to raise money for child cancer patients.
"I wanted to pull out," he says. "There were breakers 100m out to sea. They were huge and I was so scared. But because we were swimming for a cause, I kept going. I thought that what I was going through was nothing compared to what the kids were going through."
A six-hour drive away, a much calmer body of water is home to another group of enthusiasts. Started by Paula Wishart and Delle Henry, the Knysna Seahorses have taken wild swimming to new levels. They swim more regularly than other groups, with lagoon forays four times a week, and the women wear specially designed matching swimsuits and bright-pink caps.Henry resembles a '50s bathing belle and her makeup is always impeccable. Her swim cap is emblazoned with "Head girl". During the dawn swims, when the water is icy and the boats dark shapes, she keeps track of the swimmers, making sure everyone is OK.
But despite the pink and the florals, the Seahorses are not to be messed with. They are passionate cold-water swimmers and many of them have completed tough challenges - in and out of the water.
FACING THE FEAR
Carol Hampshire lost her home during the recent Knysna fires. Just a few weeks later, she was back in the lagoon. "When the fire came I grabbed a few things and jumped into the car. I made sure I grabbed my swimming stuff," she says.
For Hampshire, who has swum distances of up to 14.5km, swimming is about courage. "If I can do this with cold water, then it gives me the courage to do this in other places in my life and to overcome my deepest fears."For Janet Michaelides, the regular swims challenge her fears and allow her to switch off from the demands of life. While she has done the Robben Island swim and didn't give sharks a thought, she has an irrational fear of ... trolls. "I am terrified of bridges and buoys. I don't like passing under bridges, near pylons or hanging onto buoys or boat lines."It's for the silence underwater and the play of light; for the sense of euphoria I feel when I get out. It's because I am terrified of the sea and  I'm sick of being terrified of the sea. I plunge in and surface to the sound of my own laughter.
WHERE TO TAKE A DIP
• Dalebrook tidal pool in Kalk Bay is a great beginner's spot. And if you wear goggles, you might spot starfish and brightly coloured anemones.
• Boulders Beach, near Simon's Town, is a protected cove where you can frolic with penguins in the icy water.
• For a 'proper' swim, find the Camps Bay Hot Chocolate Swimming Group on Facebook and head to the beach at 9am on Sundays. If it's your first time, buddy up with another swimmer.
• Explore the Knysna lagoon with the Knysna Seahorse swimming group. Find them on Facebook...