Cape Overberg & Whale Route

Overberg in the early spring with canola fields in the foreground and Riviersonderend Mountains in the background

The Overberg is a region in South Africa to the east of Cape Town beyond the Hottentots-Holland mountains. It lies along the Cape Province's south coast between the Cape Peninsula and the region known as the Garden Route in the east. The boundaries of the Overberg are the Hottentots-Holland mountains in the West; the Riviersonderend Mountains, part of the Cape Fold Belt, in the North; the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in the South and the Breede River in the East.

The area has always been considered as the breadbasket of the Cape and is largely given to grain farming — mainly wheat. The wheat fields are a major breeding ground for South Africa's national bird, the Blue Crane. Another important food farmed in the Overberg is fruit with the Elgin Valley being the second largest supplier of fruit in South Africa.

Nestled in the Overberg, one can find the Kogelberg Biosphere Reserve (recognised and registered with UNESCO) populated with a large diversity of flowering plants not found anywhere else in the fynbos biome.

The major towns are Hermanus, Caledon and Swellendam and the region includes Cape Agulhas, the southermost point of Africa. The landscape is dominated by gently to moderately undulating hills enclosed by mountains and the ocean.

The name means "over the mountain" and is a reference to the regions location relative to Cape Town.

Source: Wikipedia

Hermanus

One and a half hours drive from Cape Town along the coast to the east is the town of Hermanus. Popular with Capetonians as a weekend getaway, the town's main claim to fame is the annual arrival of the whales. The Southern Right Whale, so named because it was the Right whale to hunt is one of the success stories of conservation.

Although hunted to near extinction in the early part of the century, since a ban was placed on hunting the whales in 1935 they have rebounded and return annually from their feeding grounds in the southern oceans to calve in the coastal waters of the Western Cape.

The whales can be seen all along the coast from Saldanha Bay on the west coast to Plettenberg Bay in the east, but they come closest to the shore at Hermanus, making it an ideal spot for viewing them from the shore. The whale watching season runs from mid- July to November and when viewed from up close their bulk becomes apparent. The calves are about five metres in length at birth, consume about 600 litres of milk daily and grow at a rate of three centimetres a day. Adults reach between 14 to 18 metres and weigh in at 54 000 kilograms (roughly 10 large African elephants).

Home