Whale Watching Archives - Escapes From The Little Red Dot

Woke up today feeling unwell. The weather outside remained gloomy but a rainbow soon appeared in full view from our room. Attempted to go to the beach for a little walk to see if we could catch sight of whales close by but after reaching the beach in the cold wind, my poor health status got the better of me and we trekked back for breakfast instead. Didn’t eat a lot of the complimentary breakfast, which I thought looked really good and just had African Rooibos tea which was said to aid digestion. As I proceeded back to our room to take a rest, I approached the owners for some digestion pills and that helped improve my situation. Slept for a bit before we checked out the room and headed to town again for some whale watching and pills shopping. The plan was to drive to Oudtshoorn but since I wasn’t feeling too well, we were thinking otherwise. What really changed our idea completely was when we saw the amount of whale activity going on at the same spot we were the previous evening and that got us hooked to whale watching for practically the whole morning!

Rainbow arising from the ocean in morning.

The edge where people climb to in order to get closer pictures.

Famous whale crier of Hermanus blowing the horn to communicate with the whales.

The whales were pretty active today. We wanted to get some pills first and so while walking near to the whale viewing spots, we saw whales coming out of the water. After we reached, the activity then lessened. Just when we thought it ended and started to turn around, the whales came out of the water again. We turned back and again the activity lessened. It was like hide and seek in a mean way. Finally we decided to just leave first, get the pills and whatever we needed from the shops and returned. It wasn’t too bad an idea cause after we returned, we saw whales coming out from the water pretty frequently!

Whale coming out from the water seen from shore.

Sequence shots of whale coming out of water.

Hooked till it was close to noon and by then it was really late. As we need to get into Oudtshoorn for an Ostrich farm visit, 5hrs drive away, we figured it was too late and not a good option, since we need to return to Cape Town the following day early so as to get on the afternoon ferry to Robben Island, it definitely does not seemed like a good deal. Back to Cape Town.

Mountain views on the way back to Cape Town.

Since we planned for a ostrich farm visit, we decided to visit one too, not too far away from Cape Town. Punched in ostrich farm near destination Cape Town into Garmin and we were on our way. Cape Point Ostrich Farm.

The farm was situated at the location close to the Cape National Park which we found really familiar since we were there on the first day of our visit to Cape Town. The drive was really easy, not many vehicles on the road and both road signs and directions from GPS was easy to follow. Conditions of the road was good too. Took about 2hrs to reach the ostrich farm. Thought that there was some restaurants nearby but was not what expected – a simple restaurant at the farm but selling foodstuff from the farm itself. In the end we bought a muffin for lunch as I was still feeling bloated.

The tour ran every hour and we were able to join one soon after. It was a “private tour” in a sense since we were the only people there at the time. A guide from the farm met us at the waiting area and walked us around the farm, explaining what their farm did, how they breed the birds and stuff like that. Along the way, we saw birds of different ages, held in different holding area. Educational for people who were interested in these birds.

The tour was about 15-20 mins. There wasn’t much interaction with the birds and you couldn’t ride a bird there, a little different from those in Oudtshroon. Understood from the guide that it was cruel to ride one anyway and that usually those birds would get injured and often killed after that. Since theirs was a small establishment and they weren’t keen to put the birds under stress, they did not have that. Point taken.

There was bird feed that was on sale at the waiting area which we bought to feed 2 birds that were out in the open fenced up area. They were left there so that they could mate. The wind was really strong but these 2 birds didn’t seem much affected by it. It was really amusing to feed them as they weren’t really smart, especially the male, which did not know how to reach my hand when I brought the feed close to the ground and it was obstructed by the top horizontal wooden log. The female stuck her head between the top and bottom log and managed to pick some feed off my hand. We were told during the tour that these birds weren’t smart and had very small brains, but I guess the feeding experiment showed that the male bird had the smaller one.

Female bird which is not as brightly coloured as the male.

Male bird, bright red beak showed that it was on heat.

We didn’t planned anything else that day and thus we decided to just drive around and stop at places with good views. Weather wasn’t on our side so we didn’t stop any many places either. Revisited Simonstown and parked at a location that was indicated panoramic viewpoint on the GPS. There was a rainbow yet again. We looked out for whales too but didn’t see any. However, as we drove along the shore towards Cape Town, there were some places where we could also see whales sticking their fins out of the water.

We reached Cape Heritage hotel in the early evening and approached the receptionist for assistance since we didn’t reserve a room. She was really helpful and managed to get one room for us such that we did not need to change room for the next night. It was a different one from the first time that we were there, designed differently but just as nice. The only complaint was that it was a just above the pantry and noise from the pantry was really audible in the room.

Had dinner at a Thai restaurant called “Simply Asia” around the corner and had some spicy food which really warmed us up in the balmy weather. The food was ok but a welcome change to the daily western cuisine that I was getting a little sick of. The small restaurant was busy and there was a commotion when someone who didn’t pay for some takeaway left the restaurant. Also enjoyed watching the TV that was showing world athletics games, a channel that we didn’t have in the hotel.

Spacious bathroom with tub and separate shower and double basins.

Back in the room, we went online to look at the options we had the next day if the Robben Island tour was to be cancelled again, which was very likely. We heard news the good weather would only return the following week after we left. That was really unfortunate.

Today we checked out the Cape Heritage Hotel for our onward journey to Hermanus. We spoke to the recept on leaving the bulk of our luggage at the hotel since we were coming back a few days later and they agreed! This would have helped us save some costs in terms of fuel since we would be carrying less load on this mini road trip.

We went to the Skinny Legs cafe for breakfast which was a few streets from our hotel. It was a modern design cafe with pretty good food!

After breakfast, we packed a sandwich each for our Table mountain climb from the same cafe and went back to the hotel to wait for our pickup. The company “Around about Cars” sent a vehicle to picked us up to the company which was just around the corner. Gone through the usual procedures which was done pretty quickly, partly because there weren’t many people there and we were soon off with our Nissan Latio equivalent with a GPS. 1st stop was Table Mountain.

Parked near the Platteklip Gorge climb entrance. Misty background was the route upwards.

Reached the climb entrance where there was a parking lot for a few cars. We stayed in the car for some 15 mins to observe the weather, hoping that it would really change for the better. But the cloud did not dissipate for as long as we waited so we decided to take a risk and tried climbing. After all, there were just steps and should not be too difficult.

View of the city from the parking lot. It was one of the better times during the bad weather.

Signboard of the Platteklip Gorge entrance.

So we started going upwards. The weather was really cold but we wore enough to keep us warm. The steps were easy but a little slippery. Started climbing for about 10mins and was stopped abruptly. The flight of steps had a stream of water gushing across it and we weren’t able to cross it and thus had to make a U-turn.

The little stream on the left interrupted our climb.

On the way down, we noticed a group of 3 locals also attempting the climb. We told them about the stream but they appeared unhindered and continued on. I supposed they were going to go for it. Upon reaching the car, we did not see the group coming back down so I guessed they really made it through. It was also a wonder how they managed to get up to the entrance in the first place as it was a really long walk up! Salute to these experienced walkers!

Punched in the next destination, Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, an Unesco heritage site. This was part of our contingency plan since we did not really know if we could do the climb. It was not too far away from Cape Town and also en-route to Hermanus so it was not a bad idea.

Intro signage at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden

We also read that the garden had a nice collection of flowers and a lovely view of the city with the Table Mountain as the backdrop. It was not far off from expectation if not for the misty weather that plagued the city view and the Table Mountain. And it was still winter but there were still some flowers in bloom.

And of course, we were there to look for the National flower, King Protea.

King Protea - about the size of the hand. — King Protea – about the size of the hand.

Walking around the garden didn’t take too long. For one, we weren’t exactly flower people and two, there was not much flowers due to the season. But it was a refreshing view from the city or the safari.

A duck family with ducklings waddling behind.

Our lunch place where there is a pond and the mountain view. But it was cold too!

The garden was split into various sections, we chose some to visit and also attempted to explore a route that led to Skeleton gorge, which we didn’t know any details about it and later gave up as it looked like an never ending route up to Table mountain. Had a coffee at the cafe in the gardens before it started to drizzle and then left the gardens during the periodic stop of the rain.

Yellow Crane flower, known as Mandela's Gold — Yellow Crane flower, known as Mandela’s Gold

So we began our road trip towards Hermanus. The route was straight forward and driving on the highway was really easy. The initial plan was to take a boat trip out to sea for whale watching but it was also cancelled due to weather. So we decided to just do the whale watching from the shore, as many had claimed that the whales were close to shore for our viewing pleasure.

Clouds covered skies most of the time with the occasion rainbow that brightened the drive.

Short 1.5hrs of driving and we reached the Hermanus Beach Villa and checked into a Grotto suite on the 2nd floor that had a good view of the ocean. We were told that some whales were seen really close to the shore while the owners were preparing breakfast at the ground floor. That really got us excited. We stayed in the room for a while watching out in the far but did not manage to see anything. Then we went to Hermanus town where there were higher chances of whale sightings, as told to us by the lodge owners.

Town was just a 10 mins drive away. Parking was easy since there are many parking lots available. There were already some people near the stone shores looking out at the whales, and soon enough we could already see some parts of the whales when they surfaced for air!

Again, although the whales were not too far away, it posed a challenge for my camera without a good telephoto lens. We had to depend on digital zoom.

A shot of some parts of the whale surfacing.

Stayed for at least an hour just watching these water mammals in sea was really amusing. Though it was really windy and cold, we can’t help but had our eyes glued to the ocean just so that we didn’t miss any actions. Would have spent more time if we could but the sun set and we went to the nearby Burgundy restaurant for dinner. Tripadvisor was accurate on this, the food was excellent!

While at dinner, we took the window seat so that we could try to see some whales during our dinner. And then we caught a glimpse of whale jumping out of the water, once. The waiter who was staring outside witnessed the whole event and informed us but it was too late already. That’s wildlife, nothing is planned and luck was all we had.

After dinner, we drove back to the lodge for our overnight stay. The temperature was really cold and so was the room. The helpers brought some some warm water bags to be placed under the sheets to provide warmth for our sleep, that made the stay so much heart warming too.

SA 2013 Day 15 – From Hermanus back to Cape Town

SA 2013 Day 14 – Cape Town to Hermanus for Whale Watching