Whale Watching in Hermanus

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Left Cape Town early morning (Friday 16 November) for my first trip with the Baz Bus....it didnt go so smoothly!! After battling through the rush hour traffic to get out of Cape Town I suddenly realised I had left my Camera battery and charger plugged in back in my dorm room in Cape Town....after begging the driver to go back...making a prat of myself infront of everyone on the bus in the process I was eventually forced to resign myself to the fact that returning to collect it was just not on the cards!!! I later used all my 'travelling wisdom and experience' to get the charger back....namely bribing the driver to pick it up and bring it to me at my next stop the next day!! Which to his credit (and my substantial debit) he eventually did at the 4th time of asking 3 days later!!

The bad news (or good for those of you who are only reading this to be polite), is that I have no photos of my stay in Hermanus, a small but heavily commercialised tourist holiday spot which is famous for the potential to spot whales off the coast, and not even just by boat as they quite often swim right up to the coast to bathe in the warmer shallower waters near the coast. I even ate lunch in a restaurant at the bottom of a huge flight of stairs cut into the cliff face, right at the waters edge, with the ocean crashing all around you...but didnt see any of the things....despite the fact they weigh almost 60 tonnes and are therefore even less discreet than me.

Not content with my failure to spot the whales....the only reason I actually stopped here...I decided to go out by boat on a 3 hour whale watching spectacular. A hour later, following an enjoyable boat ride in the sun around the bay, we got our first sighting...and from there on we were pretty much surrounded by mating pairs, mothers with calves and energetiC young males....I say energetic but by that I mean they were moving slowly around rather than just lying there like a giant....whaleS?!!? A truly majestic experience and one that I will not soon forget....which is a good job because I have no pictures!!!

Only stayed in Hermanus for the one night...which by the way is a great stop over provided you dont follow Lonely Planet's distinctly out of date advice...Moby's Backpackers is under new management...manangement which clearly doesnt value their "legendary pool" - now filled in with concrete...management which doesnt understand that for bar to maintain its "infamous" status needs to be filled by more people that just the managers family and local hicks smoking and drinking beer in silence...music would be a decent start?! And lastly management that fails to pick you up from the middle of nowhere (where Bax Bus drops you) and forces you to hitch a lift with another (much better) hostel shuttle. I was the ONLY person in the whole hostel....quite literally...I had a 16 bed dorm room to myself!!

"Hermanus Backpackers" not "Mobys" is the way forward for any of you travelling on to South Africa.....rant over....nice whales!

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