There are few places in the world where you can see giant whales almost within arm's reach, without getting on a boat, simply by looking out from a cliff with a coffee in your hand. Hermanus is one of them, and probably the best. Between June and November, southern right whales arrive in Walker Bay to mate and have their calves, and they come so close to the shore — sometimes just a few metres away — that the whole town revolves around them. It is an intimate and moving natural spectacle.
The town made whale watching its trademark, to the point of having a 'whale crier', who walks the seafront blowing a kelp horn to announce where whales are being seen at that moment — a figure unique in the world. A coastal trail, the Cliff Path, runs along the cliffs for kilometres, linking the best viewpoints, coves and beaches, and in high season you can see whales breaching, slapping the water with their tails and poking their heads out in full view of everyone.
But Hermanus isn't just about whales. It's a charming town with good beaches, a lagoon and, inland, the Hemel-en-Aarde valley ('heaven and earth'), one of South Africa's finest wine regions, famous for its cool-climate pinot noir and chardonnay. Add markets, seafood restaurants, fynbos trails and the chance to dive with sharks nearby, and you have the perfect getaway from Cape Town — a must if you travel in spring.
Hermanus began as a fishing village in the 19th century, named after an itinerant teacher and shepherd, Hermanus Pieters. In the early 20th century it became fashionable as a seaside resort, and its old fishing harbour (Old Harbour) is now a museum. In recent decades it has become the world capital of land-based whale watching. More about its history on the destination's history page.
Read the full history ↓Wine valleys founded by Huguenots and worked by enslaved people, and a coast of forests, lagoons and whales stretching along the famous Garden Route.
Read the history of The Garden Route and the Western Cape →They depart from Stellenbosch, 64 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
For thousands of years, the coast where Hermanus stands today was the land of the Khoisan peoples. San hunter-gatherers and Khoikhoi herders lived off an exceptionally rich shoreline. The cold waters of Walker Bay, fed by the Benguela Current, were full of fish, shellfish and seals, and behind the shore lay a sea of fynbos with game and useful plants. Piles of discarded shells (shell middens) along this coast show that people gathered their food from the sea on these rocks for thousands of years.
Just off that coast, then as now, one of the ocean's great spectacles took place. Every southern winter, southern right whales came into the bay to mate and calve in sheltered waters. Those first inhabitants knew them well long before the word 'tourism' existed. In a sense, the bay was a meeting point between the abundance of the sea and that of the land, a privileged corner of Africa's southern coast. That same natural pull, easy food and whales close to shore, would centuries later give rise to the town. It is no coincidence that Hermanus grew into a whale and tourism town right here. Nature set the stage long before anyone arrived to make use of it.
The name Hermanus has a curious and very human origin. In the early 19th century, a travelling teacher and preacher called Hermanus Pieters roamed the region with his flocks, looking for good summer grazing. Near the coast he found a freshwater spring that was ideal for livestock, and the spot became known as 'Hermanuspietersfontein', the spring of Hermanus Pieters. Over time the very long name was shortened until it became simply Hermanus.
Throughout the 19th century, a modest fishing village grew up around that spring and the good fishing in the bay. The fishermen worked from a small harbour sheltered among the rocks, known today as the Old Harbour, and brought in the plentiful catch of Walker Bay. It was a small, tough seafaring community with no idea yet of the fame that lay ahead. The Old Harbour, with its boats and old-time atmosphere, is now preserved as a museum and is the most direct record of those fishing origins. Next to it, a small museum devoted to whales explains the biology of these giants and how the town went from working the sea to protecting and watching it. That change of outlook sums up the history of Hermanus over the last century.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Hermanus changed its skin. Its mild climate, sea air and beautiful cliffs began to draw visitors from Cape Town and the interior in search of rest and good health. Word spread that the air in Hermanus was especially pure and healthy, and the town became a fashionable resort. Hotels went up, some of which, like the Windsor and the Marine, still stand on the cliffs, along with holiday homes and seafront walks. Little by little, fishing gave way to tourism as the town's driving force.
For much of the 20th century, Hermanus was a quiet, elegant holiday destination, loved for its coastline, its beaches and its unhurried pace. Like the rest of the country under apartheid, it also lived through the inequalities and segregation of that era, with communities separated and displaced. That history is part of the town's background, even if it is often left out of the tourist story. But it was in the last decades of the century that Hermanus found the calling that would make it famous worldwide, and it was literally right under its nose: the whales.
Southern right whales had always come to Walker Bay, but during the centuries of whaling they were hunted almost to extinction. Their English name, 'right whale', came precisely from their being the 'right' whale to hunt, because they floated when killed and yielded plenty of oil and baleen. Once hunting was banned internationally (South Africa banned it in 1935, and protection was strengthened in the following decades), populations slowly began to recover, and the whales filled the bay again every southern spring.
Hermanus then managed to turn that return into its identity. Because of the particular geography of Walker Bay, the whales come extraordinarily close to the shore, so you can watch them from dry land, from the cliffs, as almost nowhere else in the world. The town proclaimed itself the capital of land-based whale watching. In the 1990s it created the unique role of the 'whale crier', a town crier who blows a kelp horn to announce where the whales are, and it launched the Hermanus Whale Festival, which draws crowds every spring. Conservation also became a business and a source of local pride: today the whales are worth far more alive and watched than hunted.
Modern Hermanus is one of the favourite destinations in the Western Cape, and its economy revolves around nature. Between June and November, tens of thousands of visitors come to look out over Walker Bay and watch southern right whales with their calves, sometimes just a few metres from the rocks. It is a free, accessible show that few places on the planet can offer. The Cliff Path, which runs along the cliffs for more than ten kilometres between flowering fynbos and hidden coves, has become the setting for that experience.
But the town has broadened what it offers. Inland, the Hemel-en-Aarde valley ('heaven and earth') has become one of South Africa's finest wine regions, known for its cool-climate pinot noir and chardonnay. Nearby Gansbaai became famous for cage diving with great white sharks. The beaches, the Klein River lagoon and the seafood complete the picture. So Hermanus reinvented itself once again: from fishing village to resort, and from resort to world whale capital. That stretch of coast drew the Khoisan with its abundance, and centuries later it is still one of the most generous and beautiful places in southern Africa.
