Best travel blog - Apr 2010

Best South African travel blog entry is Red Gannet's dragonfly blog. We look for something out of the ordinary, and he certainly met those criteria - he visited the less travelled outskirts of Cape Town - Somerset West (staying at the Lord Charles Hotel, and spending time at the small dam with lilypads), the picnic area near Paarl Rock and the Helderberg Nature Reserve, and spent time taking photographs of dragonflies. Here's a clickie of the Two-Striped Skimmer (which appears to have 4 stripes!), Orthetrum Caffrum.

Orthetrum Caffru,the Two Striped Skimmer

Other blogs highlighted in April

6 Apr 2010	Other than the long layover for a Lufthansa flight in Frankfurt, what a pleasure flying business class to Cape Town. Some interesting quotes from Lorna's blog entry: "I have never flown Lufthansa internationally before and was somewhat surprised by the aggressively polite greeting I received on board. As I was preparing to store my carry-on in the overhead bin I had the distinct feeling I was being watched. Just as I backed into the aisle and began lifting my bag, a surprisingly tall and slightly bug-eyed uber German looking flight attendant took firm hold of the bag and ably wrestled it from my wimpish grasp with a simple, 'Pleaze ha-lough me to azzizt you.' This essentially sums up service aboard Lufthansa, not quite friendly but relentless in every effort to maximize efficiency." "Upon arrival in Jo’burg we were met by our greeter who had just enough time to escort us through the short queue to our South African Airways connecting flight to Cape Town. Aufwiederzen Deutschland, hello smiling and genuinely friendly African flight attendants."
9 Apr 2010	Naomi was dispatched to Cape Town and Johannesburg by Marie Claire UK, to take photographs for a story about the sex industry and the Fifa World Cup. The wind in at JFK was "howling at 60 miles per hour", so all flights were grounded. "I figured I should just go home and return the next day as I would never make my connection in Amsterdam. KLM refused to let me change so 6 hours and a few Johnny Walker Blacks later I boarded the flight. Obviously I didn’t make the Cape Town flight, but I had expected a hotel voucher, uh uh. As this was due to Mother Nature KLM wasn’t responsible to put passengers up, this after I happily offered to stay home". " I was shocked to realize I had been robbed of a tidy sum of cash I had left in my room for safekeeping. Ha! I feel awful as I’m sure whoever took it was desperate but hey, just cause I’m from North America doesn’t make me flush." "Got to see penguins while being exfoliated by the sand being whipped by the crazy strong winds." "That night I was to shoot streetwalkers with an assistant arranged for me by a professor at the University in Cape Town. Not only did my assistant show up almost an hour late to the wrong location, they bailed on me early without having actually shot one photo! A complete waste of time as I couldn’t shoot on my own as it’s too dangerous to be out with a camera alone at night (and money, I had bought him dinner after all). In all my years doing this I’ve never experienced anything like this. " "Yesterday morning I was awoken at 7 am (having been asleep for only a couple of hours) by the owner of a strip joint I was photographing at the night before in Joburg. Ends up she was tipped off by one of her staff that I may be an imposter sent from a rival club to pose as a photographer to spy on her club." "And now my flight back to NY has been delayed from 6:30 pm to 2:30 am. I actually broke down and started to weep in the airport. Didn’t get me on an earlier flight but did get me in the lounge so I can drink luke warm champagne."
16 Apr 2010	"Hifirob" set off on an SAA flight from London to Durban. It's a national sport in South Africa to complain about ACSA, but here's an instance where the London Heathrow air-crew damaged an SAA plane by sticking a hole in the side of the plane when removing the air-bridge. He cautions that finding the star alliance lounge at London Heathrow is difficult, and once you arrive it continues to dissapoint - "dark and pokey", "food selection was poor", "lacking any really nice seating" and "verging on the disgraceful" - [Ed: I hope some of our star alliance subscribers are taking notes]. For my SAA friends, I'm afraid that this premium class passenger didn't have all good words to say - "(crew) seemed more interested in chatting in the forward galley than looking after their premium customers", "plain concentrate orange. Again, not good enough" and "I pressed the call button for a coffee and after 5 minutes no joy".
23 Apr 2010	Illana returned to her country of birth, flying with Delta to Cape Town. She describes Chapmans Peak as "the eighth wonder of the world (Ed: She's not far off - whilst there's no universally accepted list of wonders of the world, Table Mountain was one of the 28 finalists in the New 7 Wonders of Nature competition), took the cable-car up Table Mountain and caught up with some tanning on Cape Town's "snow-white" beaches. In Joburg Illana visited the area she grew up in and visited the good old Lion Park (no time for a full game reserve experience), where she patted the lion cubs.

March winner

And our winner for the month is Karen's trip from Cairo via Johannesburg to visit a missionary family in Port Elizabeth, and enjoy the town's "wide and clean" beaches and "beautiful blue" seas. Karen visited the Waterfront, the Kragga Kamma Game Park ("I couldn’t believe there is a place like that so close to town"), the Addo Elephant Park, drove to Plettenberg Bay (saw Monkeyland and the Plettenberg Bay Game Reserve), stopped at Bathurst to see the biggest pineapple in the world, the war memorial at St George's Park, the Donkin Reserve, Fort Frederick, the Boardwalk shopping centre, the cannon from "The Sacramento" and the township of Kwanobuhle.

cannon from The Sacramento in Port Elizabeth

And the best February 2010 Travel blog

The "Roving Cameraman" from Edinburgh, Scotland. Virgin Premium and Upper class were fully booked so the GMTV production crew sucked it up in economy class, whilst Emma Crossby enjoyed the luxury of Virgin Upper Class (aint it wonderful being the star of the show). And there was even drama up in the skies, with one of the GMTV crew catching a lady that suddenly collapsed, started shaking uncontrollably and turning a "strange purple colour" - the Virgin cabin staff were quickly dashing around with oxygen cylinders, portable defibrillators and findif there was a doctor on board (somehow there always seems to be one). The lady's problem was diagnosed and brought under control rather quickly.

Emma Crossby at Cape Town's V&A Waterfront

After 12 hours of flying they they landed in Cape Town, where the hotel they specifically booked as as it was the only one which would guarantee to let them check-in early, let them down in this regard. Without much sleep, they went to the V&A Waterfront to shoot footage of the beautiful Emma Crosby with the (also beautiful) Table Mountain backdrop.

Top Jan 2010 travel blog

Stephen Hayes' touching account of growing up in Ingogo, a small spot in KwaZulu-Natal (then Natal), about halfway between Johannesburg and Durban, overlooked by three hills - Majuba, Inkwelo and Mount Prospect. Stephen spent several months in 1948 (a pivotal year in South Africa's history) at the Valley Inn Hotel. He swam in the river, learned how to play marbels, went for rides on ox wagons that came past laden with fire wood and went riding on donkeys. They were in Ingogo during the landmark 1948 general election when the National Party got in, and according to the "grown-ups" the one good thing coming out of the election was that they would be able to buy white bread again (the Nats had promised that they would bring back white bread if they were elected. During the war Stephen's mother used to buy brown flour and sifted it to make white bread). Thank you Stephen for drawing the past out into the light, for sharing and for ensuring that these memories are not lost to the sands of time.

donkey ride in Ingogo, South Africa

Best travel blog posting in 2009

The size of Sean Brown's heart and the power of his pen made him our winner for travel blog of the year for 2009:

"My mind could not escape the thought of the deplorable conditions that the hundreds of thousands of people that lived in what they call townships, but we would call slums or shacks."
"Living in Camden, a city known for its violence and poverty, the bad experiences can stretch from annoying to dangerous. I will never look at my home the same again. In South Africa, including Johannesburg, 1 out of 3 women are raped and never report it."
"Traveling on the bus, watching young girls walk home from school with their dusty school uniforms, I could not help but wonder how long it would be before those young ladies had their innocence snatched from them."
"I asked a friend that I met in Cape Town about public transportation. Trains? “That’s what you get on if you want to get shot,” he remarked matter-of-fact
"I am glad that my first time out the country, I was able to be a proud ambassador instead of an ashamed tourist, forced to explain the actions of #43."
"I want to be more patient and forgiving. I want to take advantage of the blessings and privileges of being an American. I want to use my education to get a job where I can learn from the world’s mistakes and be an active part of a movement to bring social, economic, and environmental justice around to world. I want to do whatever I can to assure that no more girls are raped, no more activists are jailed, and no more oppression expands. This is what I owe the world for allowing me to inhabit it."

Best travel blog posting in 2008

With dreadlocks forming from a buildup of Namibian sand in his hair, braving a cruel 12 hours in a combi-trip from hell (filled with sweaty people), and having chats with a philosophising englishman amongst Swakopmund's lego-like structures; Sebastian Modak's account of his Namibian travels was our travel blog of the year for 2008.

Sebastian at the ocean in Namibia