Whales

Last month I went to Mariana's to see the whales. There were a couple but they weren't doing much.

On Sunday most recently I went again. There were many more whales out there. Some were just lazying around, flapping flippers and rolling about. A few were doing tail lifts. It's a sight to be walking, talking, then look up and see the huge tail off in the distance of an otherwise flat sea.

It wasn't flat, flat. Not like the time Cindy, Sharon and I went to SGI and the sea was so flat it was reflecting the clouds making the offshore islands appear to float. It was the flat of frustrated waves finally getting around the cape peninsula, bouncing around False Bay to say hello.

I went there from and back to Hout Bay using the Chapman's Peak road. It's R23 each way (about $3, but in local purchasing power more like $6-$8). It's an expensive road to maintain, being effectively on the cliff face, with large steel fences to keep some of the boulders away from the road and the paying customers. Part even has an artificial overhang where the cliff is the steepest.

On the way back I stopped a few times to watch the waves come in from the deep Atlantic. The wind was behind it pushing the swells and raising the spray. At one spot there's a short footpath leading to an almost bow-like ending with a long drop down and not much else. I was enjoying the power and the glory and noticed, way down below, was another whale doing tail lifts. I thought it was rare to have whales on that side of the mountain, but there it was. It gave a great sense of scale too because that fin seems more small than distance suggested. I'll need to recalibrate my eyeballs.