𝗘𝘆𝗲‑𝘁𝗼‑𝗘𝘆𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗚𝗶𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀–𝗪𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗩𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗮 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗲𝗽

Over the past three decades I’ve spent much of my life on the road across Southern Africa quietly collecting moments that never made it into brochures. 

I’ve started turning those days into a 12‑volume series: 𝗔 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝗠𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 – 𝟯𝟲𝟱 𝗗𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗻 𝗔𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮. One book per month. One chapter per day. Each chapter a single, real moment. 

This is an excerpt from 𝗦𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 (𝗩𝗼𝗹𝘂𝗺𝗲 𝟵)–one of my favourite mornings in Hermanus, watching Southern Right whales from a cliff‑edge villa:

𝗘𝘆𝗲‑𝘁𝗼‑𝗘𝘆𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗚𝗶𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀–𝗪𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗩𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗮 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗲𝗽 

2 September (excerpt) 

There are mornings when the ocean feels like it is leaning in to listen. 

I step out onto the stoep of the villa just after sunrise, coffee in hand, barefoot on cool stone. The house hangs on the cliff’s edge, the kind of place someone once dreamed up and then had the courage—and the capital—to build. But this morning, all of that is background. The real theatre lies sixty metres below. 

Walker Bay is barely moving. The small, slow swells look as if some great hand has smoothed the surface. A single gull scribbles across a high, clean September sky. The air carries that particular mixture I have come to associate with this stretch of coast: salt, kelp, and a faint metallic tang that belongs only to deep water. 

Even with the naked eye, I can count Southern Right whales scattered across the bay. Blows show first—vertical white exclamations against the calm blue. Then backs surface: black, smooth, enormous, rolling up and over in slow arcs. Occasionally a tail lifts, dark and wide, water streaming silver in the light before it disappears with the weighty inevitability of a closing door. 

Hermanus likes to call itself the world’s whale‑watching capital. On days like this, it isn’t marketing. It’s geography. 

Later, from fifty metres up with the drone, Walker Bay rearranges itself. The whales that looked like ink marks from the stoep reveal their full, three‑dimensional selves: forty‑ton bodies suspended in water so clear I can see the paler scars on their backs and the shadows they cast on the kelp beds below. Two lie side by side, bellies almost touching, a third circling. Small adjustments, slow rolling flanks, a pectoral fin resting across another’s back like an arm. 

I’ve watched enough animal behaviour to know projection is a dangerous habit. Whales are not people. And yet: Southern Rights return to the same bays; they recognise individuals; mothers nurse calves for a year in these waters before leading them back south. They endure. They memorise. They remember. 

Read the full chapter here: https://lnkd.in/dd2Y2vNN

If this kind of journey speaks to you, you’re very welcome to travel along with me, one chapter at a time.