Hermanus

This weekend Humphrey and Sonia, our gracious hosts from the Rotary club here, invited us to their vacation home in Hermanus, a seaside town on the southern coast about an hour and a half's drive from Cape Town.  The water there is technically part of the Atlantic Ocean, but it behaves more like the Indian Ocean in terms of currents, waves, temperature, etc.  Spring is a good time for seeing whales there, and we saw several every time we looked out.  They were too far away for good pictures, unfortunately, but we got beautiful views of the beaches and coastline in both directions, some from on top of one of the mountains overlooking Hermanus.

 

On day two, we decided to hike one of these mountains.  We started by climbing a utility trail up to the contour path, but then couldn't find the trail to the top from there.  So with Andrew taking the lead, we just started going up.  A few of the scrambles were hairy, especially since we were climbing on loose rocks and shallow vegetation (some with thorns!) for part of the time.  We weren't able to find a safe climb all the way to the top, but it was a fun adventure and the views made it well worthwhile.