The day after we visited the penguins I drove us down to Hermanus, a small town on the coast, where we spent the night and searched (mostly unsuccessfully) for the whales which are supposed to be plentiful there.

Our trusty rental car

For the record, I did not enjoy driving in South Africa.  For one thing, they drive on the left side of the road, which I got used to after a short time, but they also don’t really pay as much attention to the laws of the road as your average American (and that’s really saying something), so I felt a bit like I never quite knew what to expect.  We also had dense fog, cows, and minibus drivers with a death wish to contend with.  I won’t complain about it again, but in the future whenever I talk about driving you can imagine these details in.  I did ok though, and we made it to all of our destinations.  Justin wasn’t able to drive because his driver’s license has expired!

Anyhow, we set out in the dense fog, but it cleared up after an hour or so and we got some amazing views from the coast.

Beautiful coastline and fog

We got out and did a little exploring.

A fearless explorer looking to the hills

There were signs everywhere about not feeding the baboons, so we got really excited thinking we would see some, but they were nowhere to be found.  This might have been a good thing, even though we wanted to see them, because apparently they are quite ferocious!

We stopped for a (very delicious and picked by Justin) picnic in one of the most scenic beach spots!

Sandfly beach

This beach was completely covered with sandflies.  It was disgusting because any time you stepped they just swarmed up.  Luckily for us there was a grassy area at one end with a bench – perfect for our picnic.  So we got the view and avoided the flies.

Then we were on to Hermanus where we stayed at a very nice B&B (thanks Mom!) called Avalon on Sea.  The people who own it were very nice and the place was beautiful and very convenient to the town.  The thing to do in Hermanus is to look for whales, so we set out to find some.  Everyone kept saying how there are masses of them and they see them all the time, but we didn’t have much luck.

Just as it was getting dark I managed to spot one WAY in the distance.  Here’s the best photo I could manage (zoomed in and cropped down).

Whale

We did a whole lot better on the dinner front than on the whales front.  Our hosts at the B&B suggested that we eat at the Fisherman’s Cottage and since it had recently been my mom’s birthday we took her there for a birthday dinner.  And it was SO good!

Fisherman's Cottage! (photo by Maggie Ball)

I’m not sure why we only took a photo of me and didn’t get one of the birthday girl.  Anyway, I had a Malay curry which was absolutely awesome, Justin had the line fish of the day, and my mom had a bobotie, which is a traditional South African dish, kind of like sheppard’s pie with curry spices.  There is a strong Malaysian influence in South Africa, and the food is one of the areas it shows!  Anyway, we had a really nice dinner and can highly recommend this restaurant.