Middle-aged flash packers

This morning I was subjected to having to listen to a very loud and boring man droning on to his wife/girlfriend/whatever on the balcony next to us. It wasn’t quite 8.30am and he had been holding court since 6.30am, possibly earlier. We are paying a high price for a beautiful sea view.

Our accommodation doesn’t really know what it is. It definitely isn’t a hotel even though our room is just a room and not set up for self-catering. Theres no regular cleaning or towel changing, there’s no restaurant but there is a dining room where you can heat stuff up and eat it. There’s no bar, but there’s a sitting room where you can mingle with other guests and drink your own wine. It’s as though whoever bought this place thought “this is a beautiful house, I’ll make it in to a hotel”, then realised running a hotel was too much like hard work and thought “sod it, the guests can sort themselves out”.

Pay attention now, I’m going to educate you about load shedding. Load shedding is big in South Africa because the electricity requirements are not matched by the ability to provide it. Basically it means having regular 2hour long power cuts. The upside is you know when it’s coming. The downside is, if you forget and it’s around 10pm, you can suddenly be plunged into darkness and all manner of accidents can happen. With nothing else to do, you go to sleep and at midnight you wake up thinking a party is just about to start in your room as every appliance and light you left on earlier comes on all at once.

Hermanus is definitely being picked on as the load shedding rota here for the next few days is 2x2hour power cuts. Never mind, I have the local hospital number in my phone, ready to press in the unlikely event (ha!) that S may do damage to himself stumbling around in the dark.

Today we walked the cliff path, all the way to Grotto Beach, and had a fabulous time whale spotting.

Our first stop was The Rock restaurant at the new harbour, where although we were going to have just a cup of coffee, S valiantly decided to help boost the Rock’s profits and ordered French toast with bananas and Nutella as a second breakfast. I helped him out with it as I too am all heart.

Meandering along the path, we saw several mother whales with their calves breaching and generally putting on an excellent show for us. It really is quite amazing seeing these huge creatures launching themselves out of the water. There are plenty of benches along the route, offering great viewing opportunities. We also spotted numerous dassies, a mongoose and a tiny tortoise.Walking the cliff path there and back was 12 miles so it’s a substantial walk but definitely worth it.

Dinner was at a restaurant called Fusion. Sadly it was underwhelming apart from the delicious gin and tonics. The gin was called fiddlers gin and had citrus tonic and blueberries in it. It’s made in Capetown and definitely worth trying.

When we got back, (tuktuk taxis did the honours of getting us home)we stood on the balcony and looked at the stars.

Tomorrow- Cape Agulhas, where the Indian and Atlantic Ocean meet.