Saturday- Kayaking with Whales

Saturday, we bussed down to Hermanus for some kayaking/whale watching. The bus ride is a bit short of two hours, but we left almost on time which was completely revolutionary. First, we had a chance to hang around the bay and town. I didn’t have NEARLY the super intense PI camera most people were using, so this is the only whale picture I managed from the shore, but the whole ocean was littered with whale-I mean everywhere. Unfortunately we failed to predict that it would be the slowest moving town ever and lunch became a bit of an ordeal, but we managed with a solid take away order. Then we went down to the kayaking beach and lay on the sand as the previous group returned. It was completely beautiful (we were sure summer had arrived, but as I speak/write it’s drizzling at 55 degrees F). We then hustled to assemble our life jackets and paddles (see accompanying documentation) and situated ourselves in kayaks. Sean and I seemed to alternate between being the fastest pair and the slowest pair-I’m not sure what accounted for that. Immediately, the whales came SO CLOSE. We were supposed to keep a certain distance from them, but they were very curious and followed us if we kayaked away. I wish I had pictures of those, but it was impossible to deal with in the kayak (aggravated by the fact that Sean and I realized eventually we were in it backwards, but opted to just stick it out). We got the closest to the first whale we saw, an albino (al-beeno here), and it came probably 4-5 meters out of the water so we got an amazing view.

Here we are on the shore when we first got there

Sightings from the shore (above) were pretty good, but couldn't compare to being out on the water

Kayaking!