Sunday, February 20, 2011

Another Great Tour Completed

Its been a long time since I put my fingers to the key-board. But I have been doing "Stuff" like taking a wonderful group of Candians on tour. This was my first full National Tour of this particular Itinerary. What a great tour, I had a wonderful group that was not shy of having fun and they were accompanied by an execelant Tour Director.

We started in Cape Town at the end of January. On day 1 it was Table Mountain, what a day then off to do the Peninnsula  and ended the day with Dinner at Restaurant 221 in the V&A Waterfront. The good stuff of Cape Town followed with the Winelands tour, wine tasting at 10AM followd by more at 11:30, followed by more at 13:00, the last was after witnessing how to remove the top of a "Champaign" bottle with a Saber!!
This goes back to the days of Napoleon, when the Cavalry officers would "slice off the top of a good bottle of chamaign to slate their thirst after a long day in the battle-field"

After all this we continued up the Garden route and Little Karoo as far as Knysna over the next few days, doing all the 'touristy bits' like Cango Caves, Safari Ostrich farm, Featherbed bay, Monkeyland and the Birds of Eden. An early morning start (05:30) for a flight to Durban from Port Elizabeth, then on to St Lucia in Northern Kwa-Zulu Natal for two nights. The Cultural Experience was follwed by a sunset and Sparkling Wine cruise on the St.Lucia estuary. Then it was into Swaziland for one night, with a visit to the Swazi Candle factory and the Nwenya Glass works. From ther we went into the Kruger National Park as an introduction to the next part, 3 nights at Lion Sands Private Game Reserve where we stayed at the River Lodge. On the way through the Kruger we were fortunate enough to see a loepard right next to the road, together with the normal Rhino, Elephant, Kudu, Impala, Zebra, etc. etc. etc............

Over the next 3 days we were pampered by 7 "meals" per day, game drives of about 3 hours each, most drinks free, very friendly staff and above all absolute proffesionalism from all. On the game drives we were almost in touching distance of the 'Big 5'. After this wonderful experience we had to come back down to earth and actually complete the journey to Johannesburg by first doing the Panoramic Route, Pillgims Rest, Mashishing (the old Lydenburg), Dullstroom and the boreing N4 highway. The next morning the group left for the rest of their African Experience, of Chobe in Botswana, The Victoria Falls from the Zambian side, Livingstone in Zambia and their final "Farewell Dinner" before flying back to Canada via Johannesburg. I bid the group farewell at the airport as I flew back to Cape Town, one days rest and off on the road again.

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