As seen from the cliffs in Hermanus, South Africa.
August 2015.

Nothing would be more wrong! You sometimes need a little patience but, between mid-July and the end of September, you can easily see whales playing in so little water that you’d believe they have been paid by the Mayor and its tourism committee.

Take two hours and stop when the weather is clear, use the public benches or the rocks at the top of the cliffs nearly in the center of the Hermanus town and wait… You’ll see a whale; With some luck you’ll see a mother and her calf (like the ones we saw, below) or a Southern Right Whale breaching waters once or twice in front of you. We stopped for a picnic. No need of a large tele-zoom or similar pro photo equipment!

If you are not happy enough, you can try a little harder and check for whale playing in the waves in front of the beaches, but it’s easier from the cliffs.

While touring the Internet to find the best tour provider, we quickly identified that they are plagued with a serious issue: Weather can be quite tough and leading to significant waves rolling toward Africa. Apparently, even the most seasonned seamen can find it disturbing on the relatively small boats used to run to the whales. In many cases, it appears that most of the passengers spend half of their touring time the eyes into the paper barf bag. Not a good way to see whales.

So, we chose to tour in the mot closed bay of the region: False Bay, nearly in front of Cape Town. Tours leave from Simon’s Town and we chose the smallest boat (to avoid behind packed on the 3rd row of spectators, which would make taking pictures a minor brawl). And, here we go with Simon’s Town Boat Company.

We first saw a humpback whale from a bit far (you may be happy to see one, but it’s only a fairly recognizable shape):

But there was a real school of southern right whales in the bay. They are easily recognizable from the white callosities on their forehead.

They are not easily frightened (if the boat goes real slow), even when they are playing together:

But one of the finest moments is when these huge cetaceans show their tail out of the water.

I have to admit that we were extremely lucky: Marvelous weather with strictly no wind. So, the tour was perfectly quiet, but we could not compare with other more usual situations. I would still recommand Simon’s Town Boat Company.

We could see quite clearly a large number of whales like this Southern Right Whale paddling around:

Since this is the right season, there were some young calves too, like this one with its mother:

Two of the most happy whales demonstrated there aptitude to jump out of the water.

One finishing its somersaults with a ring of bubbles in which it softly stopped, as if it wanted to draw a picture for us:

While we were flying there, we also could find Great White Sharks near the surface of the Ocean (they are quite easy to spot around the boats who a re dropping fish and bloood to attract them to sell “cage diving” to tourists looking for strong (and rather artificial) sensations:

One last shot on the way back to the airstrip…

Many thanks to Evan and Dave. this has really been an incredible experience. Your willingness to help (including photographic recommendations, assistance before and during the flight) went beyond our expectations and those are photos I am really proud of.