Having a whale of a time!

Having lunch with our franklin friend (bird)

Our last week in South Africa we spent in true style. While we were in Botswana our wonderful grandparents arranged a trip around the southern peninsula with a family friend that runs a tour company. Blair, who's usual clients have an average age of 65, had to put up with us for 5 days but what an amazing 5 days they were! We travelled for three hours along the coast to a nature reserve called De Hoop which in Afrikaans means "the Hope". The reserve covers an area of 34000 ha and includes a Marine Protected Area (you biologists out there should know what this is!). Within its grounds are endangered species such as Bontebok and the Cape mountain zebra which are thriving due to the lack of large predators. Also, luckily for us this meant that we could wander around the grounds without worrying about coming across anything more scary than baboons, and anyone reading our blogs knows that we have had plenty of experience with baboons already! De Hoop is famous for its stunning coastline with vibrant fynbos vegetation and towering sand dunes, so the first thing we did was head for the beach. It was at this point that we discovered another attraction of the site....whales! At this time of year Southern right whales can be spotted near the shore in the crystal blue/green water, and they are even more obvious when they fling themselves out of the water to breach. We spent hours on the small beach resulting in bad tan lines but we had a whale of a time (ha get it?).

First whale sighting!

Bontebok and baboons

De Hoop sand dunes

Blue crane- national bird of South Africa

  The next leg of our journey took us round the coast to Stanford (including driving through a wee village called Beard Cutting Forest. There are some weird names in Afrikaans). We drove through the shark cage diving capital of SA while Katie closed her eyes, and despite the flooding in the area we finally made it to Mosaic Farm. The lodge is usually on a peninsula which sticks into a lagoon behind Walker Bay where sharks, whales and seals can be spotted. However when we arrived the peninsula had become an island due to the flooding and we were transported from the main house to our lodge in a military vehicle called a unimog. While we were being tossed around in the back of the vehicle we were reminded more of a theme park ride than a ride to a luxury lodge. And that's exactly what it was...luxury! Our beds were turned down every night, with a chocolate on our pillow and glasses of Amarula waiting for us. As we headed out of our lodge for the first time we noticed a visitor, who was from then on called Jerry. Jerry was a fairly large mole snake who often blocked our path to the diningroom. We decided for the sake of our rumbling tummies we would leave our lodge in a mad dash every morning.

Sundowners on Walker Bay

Can you spot Jerry?

Mosaic Farm from the sky- check out the flooded road! 

miserable weather in Hermanus

waving hello!

Other than a little swimming and quad-biking our time was spent looking for whales. This was done during a sunset trip to the beach with a couple of drinks and also during a small plane ride over the bay. This plane ride was more successful than the last one in that Katie didn't chunder (hurray!) and our pilot was very friendly. We saw so many pairs of mothers and calves, including a white whale, which are just not visible from the beach. We are really struggling to describe how amazing this was so just take a look at the pictures below.

white whale lying on its back