Can I just say again how awesome our hotel (Derwent House Boutique Hotel) is? Today we had an early morning pickup (7am) for our whale watching trip and our hotel packed breakfasts to go for us! We got granola bars, an apple, a pear, yogurt, and an orange juice box. So very thoughtful!
It was a 2 hour drive to Gansbaai - where our boat launched. Dave was able to stay up to enjoy the scenic drive but I dozed off for most of the drive. When we arrived in Gansbaai, we checked into Dyer Island Cruises, were briefed about the trip, and got suited up. Our boat, The Whale Whisperer was already in the water waiting for us (the tide was very low, so we had to get on the boat fast to launch safely). The plan was to spend some time looking for whales, then head off to Dyer Island to see penguins and seals, and then check out some of the shark cage dives happening.
We sped off into the water and saw several flocks of Cape Cormorants. One of the marine biologists on board said there were over 100,000 of them on Dyer Island.
It wasn't long before we came up to our first whale sighting - Southern Right Whale. It was a mother and calf.
We also got pretty close to another whale and took these great shots of the tail and of it's "V" shaped blow.
At Dyer Island, we unfortunately did not see any penguins. Our marine biologist told us that Dyer Island used to house an enormous colony of African Penguins. In the late 1800's man settled the island to harvest the guano for agricultural purposes. This unfortunately had an adverse affect on the penguin colony and drastically reduced their population. Guano harvesting is no longer allowed and the island is now a nature reserve.
Just south of Dyer island is Geyser Rock. On Geyser Rock we were able to see the large colony of Cape Fur Seals that live there. It was amazing to see all of them on land as well as in the water.
We then made our way to a shark cage to see if we could see any sharks. As luck would have it, there was one shark. We tried to get a picture of it, but it's very hard to see it through the water (bottom right of the second picture below).
Tomorrow we're off to Robben Island and Table Mountain!
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