The Roar of the Whale

Note: It occurred to me out of the blue that our artist niece Whitney is a Fullbright scholar, not a Rhodes scholar. I mention that to forestall indignant corrections from the Baltimore contingent.

Today is Sunday, November 23, around 12 noon. Tom and I made the difficult decision to forego the Robben Island tour for which Don and Gwenna have just been picked up, in favor of spending the day here at La Residence, an idyllic paradise in Franschhoek (translation French Corner), SA. I’ll gush on about this heavenly hotel later, but for now I must catch up on our meanderings of the last two days.

Friday was a day of leisure—excellent planning on Gwenna’s part after the tiring day before. Tom and I had stayed in our room at the Marine Hermanus after arriving Thursday evening before meeting Gwenna and Don for dinner. At dinner, they told us that they had rushed down right after checking in to sit in the sunroom which overlooks the sea and the whales were plentiful and active. Oh no, thought I, there will be no more chances to see them. Missed opportunites can be so depressing.

And so the next morning, Friday, we were down fairly early in hopes of catching a few glimpses of whale tail while having breakfast. You could see rumblings beneath the surface here and there, and occasionally a huge black back would come up, but generally it wasn’t much of a show. See, I thought, we are being punished for our laziness.

Later we walked into the little town of Hermanus, checked out the shops, and then walked down to the beach where quite a crowd had gathered. There was an explanatory billboard which gave some very interesting facts about the whales, which are of the species Southern Right. This one blew us away: An adult Southern Right whale weighs over 40 tons (80,000 pounds!) which is the equivalent of TEN African elephants! Is that amazing? They can measure more than 54 feet long and have a lifespan of about 50 years. They feed by swimming with their mouths wide open through huge schools of copepods (a type of plankton), filtering the prey from the rest through long hairs inside their mouths. The plankton are very small, only a few millimeters, and the whales need to consume more than 3,000 pounds a day to fortify themselves for the long winter months when they generally don’t feed at all. My, my, nature is phenomenal.

Quite a crowd had gathered out on the rocky cliffs (damned dangerous we concluded) and the whales were frolicking about, occasionally breaking water, flipping their tails and fins and roiling up the gentle sea. We stood in safety above the crowd with a bird’s eye view of the creatures right below us and also those further out to sea which could be spotted spewing water from their double spouts. It’s very difficult to get pictures because of the split-second opportunities when one might leap full bodied into the air, but I’ll post the one good one that I have.

Ho hum, after a good while we tired of watching the whales and went and had drink at a lively Cuban spot on the beach where we could still watch to our heart’s content from the deck of the bar. We made a reservation at the restaurant next door which had been recommended by Steven and went back to the hotel. The others went about their pre-dinner business but I took my computer down to the sunroom where the reception was better and that's where I was treated to my own show. Just as Gwenna had described, the whales--maybe in preparation for their own dinners--were leaping, breaking water, wagging fins and tails and teasing me and the few other spectators with glimpses of their massive bodies.

Later that evening, walking to the restaurant for dinner, we heard the whales roaring or trumpeting or whatever their peculiar sound is called. The pulse of Africa is now beating through the soles of our feet.