After spending a couple of weeks in Cape Town, and with my brother off for a break between terms, we headed off to see some of the Garden route, and hopefully some whales along the coast.

Hermanus is particularly famous for whale watching, and this particular weekend, they were having the annual whale festival, with live music and performing arts. I felt like the whales knew what was going on, because they were coming amazingly close to the shore, giving us a fantastic view - and with people on the rocks only metres away, you really could see the scale of them!

We actually stayed a little way out of Hermanus, in a charming village called Stanford, it really reminded me of the kind of little villages I’m used to at home, with lots of nice little eateries dotted about the place. Unfortunately, it seems that just about everyone eats out in Stanford for Sunday lunch, so after having no luck for lunch, we booked for dinner that night.

Mandeli’s was no bigger than a large dining room, but they had squeezed four or five tables in, and came up with some fantastic food, no wine list but the B&B we were staying at had a small selection to choose from, intending on being fairly carnivorous, we had a couple of locally produced Shirazes:

The Raka Biography Shiraz 2003, which was the riper of the two, with fine dusty tannins and sweet vanilla oak giving the whole thing quite a rich deep character, almost like gravy to go with all the meat we consumed!

Boschriver Shiraz 2003 was fresher with more fruit, slightly confected like boiled sweets, on the nose, but on the palate the fruit gave way to the tannins, slightly drying, but still tasty with the food.