Hermanus 11/3

On Sunday afternoon, we arrived in Hermanus. Hermanus is famous for being a place where whales can be seen from the shore. Soon after we found our B&B, Eastbury Cottage, most of our group headed out to see the whales. I stayed back with Jori who took a much needed nap. My parents and Darin and Tyson both saw a lot of whales, so after Jori woke up, we all headed out again so Jori and I could see the whales too. It was amazing. We were standing up on the cliff overlooking the bay and there were whales in the water within a few hundred meters of shore. We could see them blowing water out of their blow holes and some of them were breeching, so you could pretty much see the whole body. Several of them only had their tails up and they'd leave them up for a long time. Tyson and Jori were not so much into the whales. They preferred to run around on the grass and dig up dirt using pieces of plastic they found on the ground.

We stayed out until about 5. My parents stayed in town to have dinner and we took the kids home for some mac and cheese. We had been home about an hour when out of no where there was a HUGE downpour of rain. My mom and dad were planning on walking home, so Darin headed out in the van in case they were on their way home and stuck in the rain. He came back about 20 minutes later with my parents. Thankfully they had just left the restaurant when the rain started, so they didn't get too wet. The three of them saw a beautiful rainbow over the water and at the end of the rainbow a whale had its tail out of the water. We are hoping my mom captured the image with the camera, but we won't know til they get home because their camera screen is broken so we can't see the image.

Of course, we played cards again last night. Then we woke up this morning, the kids headed out to check out the whales with Papa and Gram, Darin went to Mugg and Bean to get on line, and I had some peace and quiet! We left Hermanus a little after 9 and started making our way towards our next stop, Knysna. Along the way, we made a few stops to check out an old church and the first post office in South Africa.

We made it to Knysna around 4:30. After getting the van unpacked, we took the kids to the pool. One end of the pool is a little over a foot deep. About 10 feet into the pool, there is a drop off that starts at about 4 feet and gets deeper from there. There is a line of tile that shows where the drop off is. The kids were in the water by themselves because it was quite cold and the adults didn't want to freeze. Tyson seemed to understand that he needed to stay away from that line, but little Jori was a different matter. While I was on my hands and knees pointing the line out to her and telling her not to go any farther, she stepped over the line. I reached out to grab her, scraped my knees and shin, but my arms weren't quite long enough to grab her. Thankfully Darin was right there and he jumped in. She was totally fine, but now has a healthy fear of that tile line!

We just finished playing cards and while I sit and write this, the other adults are watching Meet the Press. It's all about tomorrow's presidential election. Strange to be seeing that in South Africa. I just looked up and Darin is asleep, so I am going to finish this up. I'll leave you with something funny Tyson said in the car yesterday. My mom asked if anyone wanted a dutch cookie and Tyson said “if i eat this cookie will it help me speak dutch?” It was really funny, because Tyson and Jori both loving singing songs in dutch and learning dutch phrases from Papa and Gram.

Stay tuned for more adventures from Knysna.