Hermanus and the Whale Coast

The Best Land Based Whale Watching In The World: Southern Right Whales Come Into Walker Bay To Calve Between Roughly June And November And Are Regularly Watched From A Cliff Path A Few Metres Above Them, In A Town That Employs A Whale Crier To Announce Where They Are With Gansbaai'S Great White Shark Cage Diving Along The Coast And The Hemel En Aarde Wine Valley Behind · Hermanus, Western Cape

Southern right whales come into Walker Bay to calve between roughly June and November, and because the bay is deep close inshore they come within metres of the cliffs. Hermanus has built a twelve-kilometre cliff path along the top of them, and it employs a whale crier who walks the town blowing a kelp horn in codes that tell you where the animals are. The result is the best land-based whale watching in the world - not a boat trip, not a lottery, but forty-tonne animals breaching below a public footpath while you stand there with a coffee. The town itself is a pleasant, slightly prosperous Cape seaside place with good restaurants and the Hemel-en-Aarde wine valley behind it. Forty kilometres east at Gansbaai is great white shark cage diving, which this row treats as a genuinely contested practice rather than an attraction. Out of whale season Hermanus is quiet, much cheaper and still a very pleasant Cape town.

On Walker Bay 120 km east of Cape Town, with the cliff path through the town and Gansbaai 40 km further east, Hermanus, Western Cape, South Africa

The cliff path is open ground at any hour, free, and runs about twelve kilometres from the New Harbour to Grotto Beach - the busiest and best whale section is the stretch through the town centre. WHALE SEASON IS ROUGHLY JUNE TO NOVEMBER with the peak in September and October, and outside it there are no whales, which the row says because people arrive in February expecting them. The whale festival is in late September and fills the town completely. Boat-based whale watching runs from the New Harbour, weather-permitting, and is regulated for how close it may approach. Gansbaai's shark operators run from Kleinbaai, weather-dependent, and WHETHER THEY ARE OPERATING AND WHAT THE PRACTICE IS HAVE BOTH CHANGED. Hermanus is about ninety minutes from Cape Town on the coastal R44 or the faster N2.

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