After the Garden Route, before you reach Cape Town there is an area of South Africa which is known along the coast as the Whale Watching Coast, and inland, the Winelands. Our first stop in this area was at Hermanus, a town famous for the high numbers of whales that pass throughout the year. There are so many whales in fact, you can just stand on the cliffs in the town and watch the whales frolicking and spouting water just metres away. It was so brilliant to watch the whales breaching and swimming around on the surface of the water – we even saw one lift and wave its tail at us! About half an hour along the coast from Hermanus is a small town called Betty’s Bay, where an African penguin colony lives. The colony are one of only two colonies in the whole of the African continent that are based on the mainland. As soon as you arrive at the point where the penguins live you can smell them! It’s a smell like nothing else, and it is so so disgusting – think a mix of gone-off fish guts mixed with every other herendous smell you can think of! Yuck! The penguins themselves where amazing however, and there were so so many of them, all just standing round, mostly looking at us looking at them! After the smell became just too much we headed inland to check out the hundreds of wineries that are located in this area of the cape. We visited a winery called Die Bergkelder, which is apparently one of the first of the wineries that were established in South Africa. In addition to sampling the wine (which we were encouraged to swallow!), we had a tour of the winery, seeing the cellar where they mature the wine as well as the machines they use to produce the wine and the actual vines they use. It is suggested that you visit four or five wineries on a mini tour, however after one we decided an afternoon lying in the sun would be far more beneficial!
Spot the whale!
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