Moment of truth. My biggest fear getting prepared for this trip was the self-drive portion. How well would I do on the "wrong" side of the road navigating big city traffic? Speaking of navigation, how does that work....is Google Maps still my friend? (in short, mostly yes). And of course, what about all the notorious crime I've read about? Yikes. I gathered info from everyone we encountered - transfer guides, hotel concierges, activity guides, online blogs, etc. Their advice all echoed similar guidelines: lock your doors, avoid driving into townships, keep valuables out of sight, and plan your trips during the day. Armed with this information, we received our rental car at the hotel and set off for Hermanus, whale capital of South Africa.
Southern Right Whale Hermanus (Mary Curry)
Along the way, we inadvertently broke nearly every rule when our navigation system steered us directly to a dead end in the middle of a township (not the place we wanted to hear "you have reached your destination") and I tried unsuccessfully to roll down my window to ask a passing cop for help (but rolled down every other window in the car instead). Thankfully, we found our way safely back to the highway and had a good laugh about the ridiculousness of two lone females from Montana navigating the South African countryside.
Fortunately that was all for our navigational adventures and we arrived in Hermanus with a few minutes to spare. Though Hermanus is known for the best land-based whale watching in the world, it was early in the season (June to December) for the whales arriving from Antarctica so we opted to take a whale watching cruise to increase our odds of seeing them.
We would have been thrilled to see just one whale, but we had a glorious day! We spotted at least 3 Southern Right Whales, including one who decided to hang around our boat for 30 minutes or so, lazily swimming along the surface and lightly fluttering her tail. In addition to the whales, we spotted seals and dolphins- a great day indeed! Whale Watching by Hermanus (Mary Curry)
Excellent travel advice and service
This is my second experience working with Adventure Life. I’m sold. Jess Heuermann is an experienced traveler and provides a lot of useful information when planning a trip. These are the questions I like to ask at the outset - What’s it like to go here, there, what would you suggest, what do people report, can we add any additional side trips? Jess took the time to answer my questions and seek additional information to share with me. Petchie Colina is outstanding in helping with travel logistics and final preparations. Adventure Life has excellent guides and offers private guides and small group adventures. We enjoyed the opportunity to talk with the guides and drivers to learn more about their countries, cultures and histories. A highlight was having the guides pick local restaurants where we could share meals together. Highly recommend.
Claire Cordon
5 days ago
Our six-day tour in Iceland went smoothly with one exception. We had asked for two rooms each night. Somehow we were booked with one room with three beds. It could not be fixed at the first hotel in Reykjavik because the hotel was fully booked. Once informed of the problem, however, Adventure Life rebooked for two rooms for the remainder of the trip. As an 85-year-old traveler, I appreciated that one could participate at different physical levels at many of the stops. Iceland is a great place to visit but on the expensive side.
Mary Warren
6 days ago
Jess was very easy going and answered all our questions. It’s not easy dealing with 6 people at once but she did an outstanding job!
Diane Foster
1 week ago
Kassandra and the Adventure Life team have been incredible! Kassandra was very knowledgeable and attentive to our asks while making sure we kept within our budget. This was our first experience with a travel agent and we were blown away by the booking/initial exploration service. We will use Adventure Life again.