The Sweet Service Award goes to Barry Lewis from Hermanus, a former Manager of Whale Cottage Hermanus, who came to the rescue when I had forgotten to bring my laptop charger back to Cape Town with me earlier this week. Barry was coming through to Somerset West the following day, his sister Carole told me, so I arranged for it to be collected from Somerset Mall, spending the rest of the day catching up on e-mails and Social Media postings. Continue reading →
Tag Archives: Whale Cottage Hermanus
Mother Nature hits Mother City and Winelands, floods affect Tourism!
Mother Nature hit the Mother City and Winelands with a vengeance on Friday evening, with torrents of rain causing flooding and massive damage to tourist areas, which are closed for repair. More than 100 mm of rain was measured in most affected towns.
Accompanied by thunderstorms, the heavy downpours went on for hours, and the accumulated waters caused flood damage to many homes and businesses. Somerset West was worst hit, as the Lourens River burst its banks, flooding nearby houses, and the town received 200 mm of rain. The 125 patients in the Vergelegen Mediclinic had to be evacuated when water reached knee-height, the patients being sent to its Stellenbosch and Panorama branches. The N2 highway in the Somerset West area was closed on Friday evening, but has since been re-opened. In Strand Beach Road was closed due to flooding, and many home and apartment owners were stuck in 
garages during power outages. The X-ray unit of Strand Hospital caught fire due to an electrical short. The scenic coastal road between Gordon’s Bay and Betty’s Bay has been closed due to rockfalls. In Hermanus the local supermarkets were all flooded due to the volumes of rain. Whale Cottage Hermanus had water come in under the door, the volume of water not able to run off quickly enough. The road between Hermanus and Stanford is closed, as is the road to Creation wine estate*. Our Whale Cottage Franschhoek has a river running through it, and thankfully it did not break its banks Continue reading →
MasterChef Season 2: Predict the winner of MasterChef SA and win a whale of a weekend!
In 10 weeks we will know who our own MasterChef SA Season 2 winner is. We are curious to hear who our readers think will become MasterChef SA Season 2, and why.
We ask you to send your nominations with a motivation via Comment to this Blog (please add your name and surname and e-mail address). To thank you for your input, we will award one lucky reader a complimentary weekend of your choice location at one of our Whale Cottages in Camps Bay, Hermanus, or Franschhoek, subject to availability and inclusive of breakfast, but exclusive of other meals and transport, out of all of those entries correctly predicting the winner of MasterChef SA. Continue reading →
Desmond Jass Sweet Service and Leapfrog Sour Service Awards!
The Sweet Service Award goes to Desmond Jass, a builder in Hermanus, who amazed us with his reliability, reasonable rates, speed of working, meeting his promises, and ‘making a plan’ to fix a number of building issues and leaks at our Whale Cottage Hermanus, caused by the extremely wet weather experienced this past winter. For weeks we had sought quotes from building companies in Hermanus, and found few getting around to send a quote or even an invoice to progress the approved quotations, Hermanus having a poor reputation for building service companies. Mr Jass is a refreshing and highly reliable contrast to the Hermanus norm!
The Sour Service Award goes to Leapfrog in Onrus, and its agent Emile Cloete, office manager Phil Pienaar, Dealer Principal Riaan van Zyl, and its CEO Bruce Swain, for their unprofessional conduct in dealing with the rental of a property in Hermanus. The rental contract had serious omissions, materially affecting the relationship between the (international) tenant and landlord. The tenant was misled by Cloete in what he was paying, Cloete attempted to defraud the landlord, then walked away from the contract after he had cashed his commission and the contract preparation fee (despite the serious errors and omissions), not fulfilling the role prescribed for the rental agency in the contract. This action was condoned by Van Zyl and Pienaar. The request for Van Zyl to call the landlord was ignored. Cloete’s conduct was criticised by Swain when the story was related to him, but he has taken no action. Prospective tenants and landlords are advised to not deal with this unethical rental agency!
The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog. Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com. Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.