We arrived in Hermanus (pronounced Her-mar-nus) late afternoon and found our B&B easily. Our host Colin was in his garage and promptly invited us to park inside (parking for about 5 cars) before showing us to our room - a massive one on the ground floor with private facilities of course. I've no idea about house prices in Hermanus but his place was huge and the furnishings were exquisite.
Colin was an interesting character, loved to talk and seemed to have done just about everything in his life; he'd fought in Angola (mercenary?), owned/ran a shooting game reserve and now him and his housekeeper Unique run this B&B whilst his wife is back in ??? running the other family businesses.
Tomorrow we are booked on a whale watching boat trip so we went back out to check exactly where we were going as it was an early start. And then drove into town for an early dinner; we had very nice fish & chips but the waitress was hilarious - she was only young but obsequious doesn't come close, she practically genuflected each time she reversed away from our table.
We were up and breakfasted (very nice) and back at the boat yard in plenty of time.
At this point we didn't know, but later in the voyage we got chatting to the guy sitting next to Ian and his 2 female travelling companions and they were from Larmor Plage - small world.
Hermanus is renowned as the best place to see Southern Right Whales between June and November - well we're at the tail end of the season so we're keeping our fingers crossed.
We were out for just under 2 hours and mostly this was the view - everyone straining their eyes trying to spot an elusive whale.
The guy in charge was incredibly enthusiastic and kept a running commentary the whole time and when we finally spotted a whale he went into overdrive about the wonderful sighting we were having.
The water was very choppy, we were up on the top deck and wedged ourselves against the front as much as we could but nevertheless taking my hand off the rails to shoot was quite perilous at times and I acquired a good few bruises.
Because the whales only surface briefly it's incredibly hard to get a shot as naturally you hit the trigger once you've spotted it and by then it's gone back down again. I ended up shooting more or less blind and multi-shooting whenever Ian said "look". This one missed the whale but I did get the blow!
Very occasionally I got lucky although I had no idea at the time and couldn't see anything on the back of the camera. I've left the side of the board in to show how close we were.
Of course what I was hoping for was a spectacular acrobatic display with lots of tail slapping and breaching - only it turns out all the Southern Rights had already left the bay and we were actually seeing a resident Bryde's Whale which generally don't exhibit these behaviours. Never mind we did see a whale which will save the boat company giving a 50% refund to everyone!
Back on dry land and we drove back to the B&B for a rest. We then walked into town along the cliff path spotting these Cape Sugarbirds along the way.
As usual it's the male that has the long tail.
The cliff path meanders along and is perfectly safe during the day but Colin warned us not to walk it after dark so we plan to get a taxi back after dinner tonight.
This is a koppie foam grasshopper Dictyophorus spumans which produces a toxic foam to defend itself.
The colour is slightly different but I presume it's the same species.
A helpful poster showing us what we didn't see. During the season apparently they come right close to the shore and are easily spotted from the path.
This is the Old Harbour as opposed to the New Harbour where we boarded our whale watching boat.
The restaurant we ate in last night.
There are some lovely old buildings.
Probably the largest watermelons I've ever seen.
This is a natural swimming pool but very cold I would imagine.
Later in the afternoon we walked back down to the Old Harbour.
We had a lovely early dinner in a second floor restaurant with fabulous view. For probably the first time in our lives we ordered the most expensive bottle of white wine on the menu - £12.50 and it was delicious. I also rather liked the bottle holder cum cooler.
We'd planned to get a Uber back to the B&B but none appeared keen to pick us up - not that we really knew what we were doing, I'd only just downloaded the app and never used it before. Anyway the restaurant kindly arranged a taxi for us so it was fine.
