A town nearby
Hermanus
The cliff path, the whale crier, and the harbour the boats leave from.
35 minutes from the estate
The town the whole coast is named for, and the reason most people come to this part of the world. A twelve-kilometre cliff path runs the length of it, from the New Harbour to Grotto Beach, and for six months of the year southern right whales calve close enough to the rocks to be watched without a boat.
How it got here
It began as Hermanuspietersfontein, after Hermanus Pieters, a schoolteacher who brought sheep down to graze on the spring here in the 1830s. The name was shortened in 1902 because it was too long for the postal service. It was a fishing village first and a resort second, and the Old Harbour has been kept as it was.
What to do there
- Walk the cliff path — it is free, it runs the whole town, and it is the best land-based whale watching anywhere
- The Old Harbour and its museum, where the fishing boats were pulled up by hand
- Grotto Beach, at the far end, for the long flat sand
- Fernkloof Nature Reserve above the town — sixty kilometres of paths through fynbos, no charge
Worth knowing
- Whales are here between June and December, and thickest in September and October
- Hermanus has the world's only whale crier, who signals sightings on a kelp horn
- The cliff path is open at all hours and costs nothing
More near the estate
Everything within about an hour.
