Day 244 - Whales

After a delicious breakfast, we moved on to our next destination – a little town of Hermanus, famous for whale watching during the South African spring season (September – November). Today also brings us a new hotel to "inspect" and stay in – Arabella Hotel and Spa (5*).

The Road

You can take two different roads from Cape Town to Hermanus; both of them about 200 km, both of them very picturesque. One of the factors affecting your choice is weather conditions: sometimes the strong winds make it dangerous to take the coastal road. We were lucky to take both – the coastal on the way down and the mountain on the way back.

In the car, Svetlana – our awesome guide (a cosmopolitan young woman of the Lithuanian origin, amazingly helpful and attentive, with a great sense of humor) – gave us a lecture on the southern right whales typical for this region, as well as other flora and fauna species we encountered along the way. Here are some random facts that made it to my phone (for those of you not in the know of my "memorizing" habits: I put everything I find interesting in my phone; that way things get a chance to be if not remembered, then at least not completely lost in the oblivion of my personal information overload):

• Ostrich is considered to be the "dumbest" bird: its brain can fit into a teaspoon and weighs only 40 grams while the total weight of ostrich can reach 100 kilos.
  
• There are over 100 species of the beautiful protea, the national symbol of South Africa.
  
The former South African Prime Minister and architect of apartheid, Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, had a dream to change the then-current flag of South Africa and have in its center a leaping springbok antelope over a wreath of six proteas. This proposal, however, aroused too much controversy and was never implemented.
• There are over 900 species of antelope, most of which are native to Africa. Some of them tend to be monogamous; ironically those are called dik-diks…
  Jumping a little further I must say that the antelope meat is absolutely delicious – sweet and very tender.
  
• The testicles of an adult southern right whale
  are likely to be the largest of any animal, each weighing around 500 kg!!! This suggests that sperm competition is important in the mating process. They are called "right" whales because whalers thought the whales were the "right" ones to hunt, as they float when killed and often swim within sight of shore. As such, they were nearly hunted to extinction during the active years of the whaling industry.
  

The Whales

For some reason, I expected to see a "sea" of whales, two-three hundred or something like this. But to my disappointment there were only 4 whales, granted, very close to the shore, but only 4!!! And you cannot really see the whole whale anyway. All you can catch a glimpse of is tails and fins…

The whole experience was still nice though. The drizzling gloom perfectly meshed with the tubal awe-inspiring mating cry of the whales and their massive thunder-sounding flaps produced either in excitement or frustration, hard to tell.

The Spa

I booked two treatments for myself – a sports massage and reflexology. I had never done a sports massage before, knew it was supposed to be deep-tissue, but was wondering how deep. When I saw my masseur – a tremendous muscular black guy – I realized I was in trouble. Sure enough, for the first time in my entire life, I actually had tears streaming down my cheeks (and normally I'm the one for very hard massages!). I didn't want to ask for mercy because I wanted to experience the real thing, and I didn't regret it. I felt absolutely awesome afterwards. And although I was a bit worried that the following day I'd have some serious bruises, it looks like he was a true professional and left no marks on my poor back.

P.S. Since my camera battery died and my luggage (containing the charger) finally re-united with me only at the very end of the day when we were finishing our 3rd bottle of wine for dinner, there are no pictures for this day. But honestly, whales were not worth documenting (they don't really show themselves, only fins and tails).