Spring Leviathan

It is a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Leviathan, come to visit these shores to breed, calve and - it seems - splash about in a most undignified manner.



The Southern Right Whale, so called because back in the day they were the 'right' ones to harpoon as they swim slow and tend not to sink when killed, are about 15 metres long. They migrate up the coast of South Africa every winter/spring to do their thing. A bunch of them congregate in the bay of Hermanus close to the true southernmost tip of Africa: Cape Arghulas (not the Cape Point). From the cliffs you can see them breaching, standing on their heads and waving their fins.

The cliffs of Hermanus are, like the slopes of Table mountain, also home to the Rock Hyrax, or Dassie as it's commonly known.



The Dassies (Klipp Dassies as we call them) are closely related to the elephant, although they look more like slender tailless beavers, and are much cheekier than your regular rodent. This pair was not impressed with the cavorting sea creatures a mile off shore but were more interested in just chilling out in the spring sun and wait for us tourists to drop a Kit Kat or something.

On this occasion the whales did not approach just right by the cliffs, as they sometimes do. But when we drove back the 1.5 hours to Cape Town we stopped at a beach on the way, and guess what was splashing in the shallows only a hundred or so metres out? That's right, a lone whale. The water is still cold, even some way up the pacific coast side, so we didn't swim out to greet it (that, and the fact that the pregnant whales attract the sharks). But walking up and down the gorgeous beach we agreed that this was probably the most scenic nursery any of us had ever seen...