Hermanus Whale Watching Day Trip

Contrary to the description, whale watching is not part of the tour; you have to take care of getting a 12 o'clock tour with one of the 2 (3) external providers yourself beforehand, which, however, was already booked out days in advance for us. So we took the bus to Hermanus, which was not extremely exciting, spent 3 hours in Hermanus, and then drove back home. Unfortunately, we did not see any whales. You can only do the wine tasting and the tour of pretty little Hermanus if you have not booked a whale watching tour. A real shame.

This is a total scam. It all begins with an error from the company that told us to be at the pick up point at 8:30 in the morning, we got there 10 minutes earlier to find out that we have missed the shuttle to the real pick up point, so we had to take an Uber to go to the real pick up point. We promptly complaint about this and the employee of the company said someone made a mistake because they should have told us to be at the pick up point at 8:00. In addition, we only learned that the tour did not include the price for the boat after we have paid. On the day of the tour, we learned from our guide that tickets for the boat should have been bought in advance, and that he would try to see if there was a cancelattion upon our arrival at Hermanos. Of course all boats were fully booked by the time we got there. Personally, I was lucky to be able to purchase an extra spot in one boat from a nice lady that had an extra ticket because her husband could not make it. But the rest of the tourists were frustrated since they did not have tickets and getting there it was impossible to buy tickets since the boats were fully booked with no last minute cancellations. In the end, we paid for an expensive wine tasting (not avalible for the ones lucky enough to be in the boat), far away from Cape Town. Additionally, one of the partner boat companies was unavaible due to their boat that was broken. The company should have had the descence to allow refundable cancelations in such cases. As I said, I was lucky to find an extra ticket for the boat from one of the tourists in our group, but all the other 10 people lost the day, out of 15 in the total group.

It was z great experience! Our tour guide was very friendly and knowledgeable. He told us a lot about the Hermanus and a lot of places on the way there. Me and my friend plus three other people from our group did not go on the boat tour once we got to the harbor, so he took us to the place where we could see the whales from the shore. We all had a great time.

Awesome time to see dolphins and whales

If you choose to do the boat trip to see whales, take motion sickness pills before going. Whales can be seen from shore in Hermanus most of the time.