The Garden Route - First stop Hermanus

We left Cape Town this morning, albeit a little late after having issues with locking ourselves out the house. This truly wasn’t an ideal situation but a few hours behind schedule we eventually started our Garden route road trip.
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Today would see us drive 2 hours along the South Coast to Hermanus – one of the most famous towns for Whale Viewing over Winter. Along the way we stopped at Betty’s Bay and I have to admit, this little stopover was 100% worth the time. 5 minutes from the main road will take you to the beach which is covered in little penguins all lined up beautifully basking in the sunlight. 

If you have been reading, you will remember that we went to boulder Beach a few days ago and it cost us $16NZD each, whereas here, there is a beautiful little café, great bathrooms and to walk the full walkway costs $2.50NZD pp!! Definitely come here over Boulder beach any time! We didn’t even pay as by the time we got to the boardwalk we had passed so many little penguins we didn’t feel the need to have to walk the boardwalk – and it was blowing a hoolie!
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From there we continued the adventure through to the coastal town of Hermanus to check into ‘Mariners Village’ home to our Air Bn B for the night. It’s excellent here, for $47NZD we have half the house, our own garden and kitchen facilities. We really enjoyed our last host in Cape town but here it’s nice to have privacy again.

​As it was pushing 4.30pm we opted for a quick 5km’s stroll along the Cliff path, which is a must do in Hermanus, and we can totally understand why. The path itself is easy and runs for 10km’s showcasing the incredible bay, beach and cliffs. We never spotted any Whales as it’s now time for them to migrate but maybe we will be lucky in the next few days. What we did see however was the abundant families of Hyrax. These beautiful little rodent type animals (which after reading up on them found out they are the closest relative of the Elephants, but I don’t know how much I trust that) are scattered along the cliffs and lush dense shrubs on the sides of the paths. I love them, Leo can’t stand them as we saw so many, he claims them to be like rats but I personally think they look like tiny bears. 

​There are a few excellent places to eat here that we have been recommended, but we opted for the cheap option of supermarket picnic and home as we were exhausted and the wind was pretty crazy by this point.