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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Cape Town in all her glory – no wonder that Cape Town is on Forbes.com “10 Most Beatiful Cities” catalogue along with Paris, Sydney, Vancouver, Rome and Venice. This spectacular photograph of the Mother City and the Green Point Stadium was taken on Sunday through Cape Town Photographer, Greg Lumley, a beautiful, clear, summers day in Cape Town. Are Capetonians lucky to live in such a beautiful city …

Photograph of Cape Town courtesy of and © Greg Lumley

Contact Greg:
Apart from weddings, Greg also shoots editorial and corporate; portrait; events and interiors.

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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.

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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! Read more…