Cape Wine Festivals

Wherever you look during the grape harvest season (late January to April) there is a harvest festival on. More and more wine estates and wine routes jostle for attention during the time of the bounty of the vineyards, and there is a real sense of harvest time as an adventure to remember. Suddenly grape picking, foot stomping and a serious amount of wine tasting is very much a part of the annual social calendar.

Winemaking, also known as vinification, has a science of wine and winemaking attached to it, known as oenology, but it is the gather in that has the most romance associated with it, in no small part due to its relationship with the Greek god Bacchus, and the patron saint of wine-growers, if you’re vaguely Catholic, St Vincent. As a result, it is the harvest that often gets the most attention in the process of wine making, and the anniversary spirit, particularly in recent years in the Western Cape, is something in which everyone can join in …

Spier Wine Harvest festival – 27 February 2010, 10h00 – 16h00
The lawns in front of Eight – Spier’s new ‘farm-to-table’ restaurant in Stellenbosch – are the seat of this year’s festival.

Read more…

Meet Lema Peter, a Kilimanjaro Guide who has reached the “Roof of Africa” more than 100 times. Lema grew up at the foot of Mount Meru with never a thought of climbing up Tanzania’s second highest peak. His clan, part of the Meru tribe, believed that God resided up there. If anyone disturbed God, misfortune would likely befall on the clan. Mount Kilimanjaro, a few hours drive away was even more forbidding. If a powerful God lived on top of Mount Meru, then just imagine how powerful the God living on the top of ice-capped Kilimanjaro would be.

Nineteen years later we find a young Lema standing on the top of Kilimanjaro for the first time and worrying about how on earth he’s going to explain this to his mother. Ten years after that, Lema has started his own safari company – Serengeti Pride Safaris. Last month Lema’s sister reached the top of Kilimanjaro, she’s single in kind of the very hardly any Tanzanian women to have ended so. His brotherhood no longer worries about disturbing the God at the top of the mountain, they’re all too busy earning a living as porters.

Read full interview with Lema Peter…

The first home brewed country tourism authority run URL shortener http://mzan.si was launched just over a day ago and it is already getting amazing responses – In 24 hours, the tool has generated 289 shortened URLs which represent 227 mark URLs. Mzan.si links have already been clicked on all over the world, a total of 3275 seasons (and counting!).

This home brewed URL shortener created and developed for South African Tourism  as part of their 2010 FIFA World CupTM campaign by Quirk eMarketing allows users to shorten, divide and pathway links with ease as well as upload them to their social networks for simple and convenient content sharing.

With the world getting more and more into quick and easy communication, making long sentences shorter to make optimal use of character space as seen in sms language is a must. URL shorteners especially in the case of twitter are very popular at the moment. http://mzan.si made its debut just at the right time. Anyone talking about South Africa will find the URL shorteners very useful and fun.

Read more…

I love ostriches and luckily, when you’re on safari, you won’t have much difficulty seeing them. Wild ostriches live throughout Africa, mostly in the drier areas and at low elevations. There are 4 living sub-species and they all inhabit different parts of the continent.

The ostrich is the world’s largest bird and it won’t surprise you that it can’t fly. But boy, can it run. It’s large powerful legs can propel this huge beast to speeds of up to 45 miles (70km) an hour. Those powerful legs can also kick like a mule and kill a man, so it’s best not to corner an ostrich. Just in case you do anger it, keep in mind that ostriches can only kick forward, not backwards.

The fact that the ostrich can run like the wind has made ostrich racing a popular sport, especially in South Africa. Riding an ostrich is on my list of chief 50 things to do before I die. If I can’t make it to Oudtshoorn, in the Karoo (the ostrich capital of the world), I could try my hazard in Phoenix, Arizona at the Ostrich Festival that’s held every March.

It’s my unscientific opinion that the ostrich must be one of the most versatile animals in the cosmos. Ostrich farms are very popular, you can find them as far afield as Texas, Israel and Namibia. Read more…

Call for volunteers

Many of you must be familiar with the television series Extreme Makeover – Home Edition, where families who are down and out, who have faced hardships in life or are desperately in extremity of a better and sometimes safer living space are surprised by a team who rebuilds, extends, upgrades and improves their home.

Well how would you like to take part in an ultimate makeover? I’m sure your immediate answer is yes, however this extreme makeover is not one that involves you or your inn getting upgraded, but this involves you making the lives of some very special children a whole lot better and giving their home an extreme makeover …

Woolworths together with MySchool is sponsoring some extreme makeover of the St Georges Home for Girls in Wynberg, Cape Town who cares for over 40 girls. This home is over 100 years old and is definitely in need of some TLC. Thanks to the Woolworths Food Youth Day promotion in 2009 this project is able to happen, it will be managed by NewKidz on the Block and Cape Core Construction.

The St Georges Home for Girls is a registered Children’s Home and is the only residential care facility in the Wynberg District who provides care instead of children who have been abandoned, neglected, orphaned or abused. Read more…

If you’d like to support Africa’s athletes during the 2010 Winter Olympics, make sure to catch the opening ceremony, it may be the only time you get to see them. There are 7 African nations competing at the Vancouver Olympics, that adds up to about a dozen athletes, not any of whom are expected to medal. But, the story is really about how they got to Vancouver spite the tremendous odds against them. Like a lack of snow, facilities, money, support — you name it. So meet Ghana’s first Winter Olympic athlete, cheer on Morocco’s skiers, and give a big thumbs up to Kenya’s lonely cross-country skier, Philip Boit. It’sitting his fourth and final Olympic Games. And please help me find information about the Algerian team! They’re meant to be participating, but the lack of information has made them invisible.

Find out all about: Africa at the 2010 Winter Olympics.

WIN a 3 night stay at the biggest game reserve in the Southern Cape – Plettenberg Bay Game Reserve – and discover an “Out of Africa” experience just a few minutes drive from the seaside town of Plettenberg Bay on the Cape’s magnificent Garden Route.

The prize includes:

• 3 consecutive nights accommodation for 2 people sharing at the exclusive Baroness Luxury Safari Lodge
• breakfast and dinner daily
• a game drive OR (for an “up close and personal” experience) a horse safari each day

Plettenberg Bay Private Game Reserve is home to Africa’s Big 4 (rhino, buffalo, lion and leopard). The reserve is situated on across 2,000 hectares of indigenous beauty and is malaria free. There are over 150 different species of game and birdlife. Join us on a horseback safari to interact closely with the wildlife, or simply relax and enjoy a 2 hour game drive in an open landrover with our experienced and well-informed guides and see our large variety of wildlife up close.

Read more…