Morgan's Year in Cape Town: Hermanus

Unfortunately the weather has still been terrible, making it difficult to do much weekend exploring. Even so, we managed to head to Hermanus last weekend for some whale watching. Julia just bought a car, which we decided to test out. Also, I don’t think ours really likes the long-distance highway driving. (It shakes fairly aggressively once you hit about 110 km/hr. Byron’s hands once because numb after being on the steering wheel at that speed for a prolonged period of time, haha. I never drive for that long, but maybe someday I’ll get to experience it...)

Anyway, Hermanus is a quaint little town located about 1.5 hrs southeast of Cape Town, on the coast. The drive is beautiful, with the road winding between the mountains and the ocean the whole way. Hermanus is known for its whale watching, and it being whale season, we definitely wanted to check it out. The town is gorgeous, situated right on the oceanfront and surrounded by mountains. When we arrived, we barely had time to get oriented before the sounds of the whale crier made us rush to shore (the town employs a whale crier who blows a giant horn whenever there are whales nearby). Based on our experiences, I do not fault the town’s tourist department for wanting to claim that Hermanus provides the best whale watching on earth – it was amazing! The water must get deep incredibly fast because there were quite a few whales hanging out just a few meters beyond the beach rocks. Though multiple whale species live in the area, we only saw the Southern Right Whale. It’s their calving season, which made for especially fun viewing. When we were watching the whales near the beach, there were also a number of them breaching off in the distance. It was like watching fish jump, and everywhere you looked there was action...though of course those types of moments are impossible to capture on camera.

We finally managed to tear ourselves away from the scene, only because we had a boat tour scheduled for the late afternoon. We arrived at the dock in time for the pre-trip whale education lesson. It was an interesting crew we threw in with. First of all, the guide asked us where we were from and Heather answered “Canada” (which no one else disputed, for simplicity’s sake), after which the guide said something like “ok...so you guys good with me talking in Afrikaans?” Not quite, haha...The next odd moment occurred when he said “don’t worry, we have a life boat and we will definitely be getting everyone back to shore tonight.” I thought he was just trying to be funny, but then I realized he might not be joking. When he handed us all life jackets and actually made us put them on (as opposed to just having them on the boat), it finally sunk in that our whale watching trip might be slightly different from what I expected. And then I saw the boat. And it was really small. In fact, smaller than the whales themselves…

You’re probably wondering how I could be so naive, but I’ve been on countless commercial whale watching excursions before so I thought I knew what to expect – a very large, stable boat with indoor and outdoor seating, tons of deck space, bathrooms, a cafe, etc. Looking at our boat, I had no idea that commercial operations would venture to take you out in a boat that small, facing swells that were taller than the boat itself. Well, actually, I don’t think they ever would be able to in the States, but you can get away with a lot more in South Africa, haha. Of course the best viewing was from the upper deck, which of course was all the more tippy. Still, despite the boat rocking back and forth considerably and needing to either sit down or wrap at least one arm tightly around the railing in order to prevent yourself from tumbling off (a prospect made even more tricky given the need to devote the one hand to a camera), it was an amazing experience.

Boats aren’t allowed near shore where we had previously seen all the whales, so we had to head further out into the ocean. We happened upon a mother and baby fairly early, which was great. The baby was so cute! It was apparently about 2 months old and was always right by its mom’s side. It even spent a while playing with a large piece of kelp, pulling it around and mouthing it. I always find it interesting that babies of all kinds of species, be it kids, puppies, or whale calves, are universally united by the desire to play. So all in all, it was a great trip, especially since we made it back to shore in one piece (though it was touch and go for Julia who got fairly seasick).

Now keep in mind when you see these pictures how difficult it was to both hold on to the rocking boat and take photos at the same time...

Whale watching from the shore