Southern rights and fynbos

From about July to November, the endangered southern right whales migrate north from Antartica to the warmer waters of South Africa. So, we packed the overnight bags into the trusty little auto and took off on Saturday morning for a 2 hour drive east towards the "whale coast".

Fortunately, we were having a break in the rain and hail and winds, and we were thrilled to see blue skies! The scenery along this stretch of coast reminded us all of our beloved Big Sur - the mountains crashing into the bays, steep cliffs on both sides of the road - along with hundreds of shipwrecks in the rocky waters below. However, these 400 million old sandstone mountains are quite different from the Ventana Wilderness. From our car view, we classified the vegetation as "naked Big Sur", but the locals refer to this distinctive Cape flora as "fynbos" (pronounced fane-bos), a Dutch term meaning "fine bush". For my plant enthusiast friends, these fynbos plants make up about 4/5 of the Cape Floral plant kingdom - the smallest and richest of the 6 floral kingdoms of the world. And of the 7,700 plant species in the Cape flora kingdom, about 5,000 are endemic to the Western Cape. Needless to say, this coastline is hardly naked! .

Our day's destination was the small town of Hermanus in Walker Bay. This fishing village grows to a popular tourist destination during these whale migration months. The cool thing about this whale watching location is that the whales come so close to shore (sandy bottoms and deep waters) that you don't need to go out in a boat to see them.


We arrived in Hermanus to find locals and visitors strolling along the coast road, on foot or in their cars... hundreds of people out and about - all there to watch the whales. We must have seen about 20 southern right whales that day. They seemed so relaxed hanging out in the bay, by the shore - rolling over, standing on their heads with their flukes in the air (sailing) or coming up to the surface, nose first (spyhopping). Every now and then they'd let out a big, long grunt! We had lunch with the whales that afternoon, and breakfast the next day with 2 whales right from our b&b porch. I asked the proprietor if she ever got tired of looking at them. "Oh no," she exclaimed, "They're different every day!".

The next morning we left the whales and went on a hike at the Fernkloof Nature Reserve right outside Hermanus. About 1600 species of fynbos plants make up the reserve. Some of the flowers in the reserve were on show in a small visitors hut at the base of the trails. On the door, the sign read "Please shut the door to keep the baboons out"! We didn't see any baboons on the trails, (or snakes, for that matter - Maya and I were happy about that!) - but we did see some beautiful flowering fynbos plants (proteas, ericas, leucodendrons, leucospermums, gladiolus), heard wonderful bird songs and took in some great views of the coastline, and oh... not to forget a few more whales from afar!

We took the inland route back home - through a quiet agricultural area with sheep farms and smaller wineries (which we discovered were all closed on Sundays). There were some snow-covered mountains In the distance. As we got closer to Cape Town, the wind started to howl and the skies darkened... another storm was brewing!