Surfing the 'tubes & breaching whales

In the surfer's paradise of Jeffrey's Bay, as featured in the movie 'Endless Summer', we stayed at a backpacker's lodge next to the beach at Supertubes, we woke up early every morning to catch the sunrise and watch the experienced surfers catch perfect tubes. Stunning every morning! We were so inspired by those surfers, we decided to take surf lessons ourselves in J-Bay. Although Bryan and I have both dabbled in surfing, we've never had real instruction, and before moving to Santa Barbara we figured we better learn so we can hit the waves more comfortably at our new home. We had so much fun learning to surf, it was a great sunny day and our teacher was enthusiastic and energetic, rooting us on as the waves rolled in, calling out, "Who wants this one??" in his South African accent. Surfboards in Jeffrey's Bay are about ¼ the price as boards in California, so we actually ended up buying a couple new surfboards to use in CA, which we strapped to the top of our rental car.

Our next destination was Tsitsikamma National Park along the famous 'Garden Route.' Tsitsikamma was beautiful!! Waves crashed forcefully against the rocks along the beach, verdant forests lined the cliffs, and we took a beautiful hike along the Loerie trail. After Tsitsikamma, we headed to the coastal town of Plettenberg Bay, where we ate seafood and went on an awesome 4-hour hike around the Robberg Peninsula. Along the peninsula we saw Cape Fur Seals, a breaching Southern Right Whale, endangered black oystercatchers (birds), and gigantic (up to 20-foot!) waves crashing against the rocks of the peninsula. The hike had been a suggestion by a South African friend, Hugh, that we'd met on the Wild Coast- and his tip to hike the peninsula was well worth it- a spectacular adventure.

On our way out of Plett Bay, we made a stop in Knysna to take a tour of Mitchell's Brewery, a small brewing company with completely natural beer- no preservatives. In fact, the beer only has a shelf life of two weeks! While there chatting with the staff, we learned that the place we had reservations to stay at that night – a cool backpacker's lodge in old train cars on the beach - had burned down the day before! Good thing they told us! It was late in the afternoon, so we had to make other arrangements for the night. Our running joke during the trip was everywhere we went in South Africa burned right before we got there- Blyde River Canyon's hiking trails were all closed due to fires, Kruger still had fires going while we were there, Swaziland had just put out the biggest fire in their country's history, and now the place we were supposed to stay at for the night had burned down the night before! Strange!! Our weather/fire luck was about to change, though, as the last week of our trip had more rainy days than not (winter in South Africa).

We spent the next morning driving to the southernmost point on the African continent: Cape Agulhas. As a geographer, I had to go there; it's where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet! It ended up being a nice side trip with pretty beaches and scenic drives. We arrived in Hermanus, a coastal town dedicated to whales. The town used to be a whaling harbor, but now caters to whale watchers and is arguably the best whale watching spot in South Africa. We were lucky to be there during the Southern Right Whale breeding season. The whales were very active- breaching all over the place! It was amazing! I'm used to seeing whales spout or show their tail fluke in California, so it was quite a treat to see these huge marine mammals catapulting themselves out of the water in dramatic breaches. Hermanus is a nice place to go whale watching, as the town is perched on cliffs, and they have a nice walking trail along the cliff's edge where you can easily spot whales. Along the trail we also came across many rock hyraxes, and were treated with a beautiful rainbow over the bay, just before sunset. Now getting into South Africa's wine country, we decided to visit a couple wineries just outside Hermanus and were rewarded with no tourists, free wine tastings, delicious wine, and gorgeous scenery. It was raining for most of the day, so it was perfect for wine tasting! We spent the next night in the gastronomic capital of South Africa, Franschhoek, where we did a little wine and cheese tasting in a valley surrounded by picturesque mountains.