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We are very excited to announce that as a big thank you for the enthusiasm shown by the South African market in taking up to local cruises, the MSC Opera will be sailing from South African shores for the 2012 / 2013 cruise season.

Whilst we will be sad to say good bye to the Melody, as she has become a firm friend of ours, it is wonderful to be able to offer the Cape Town clients, and of course the surrounding areas, an opportunity to experience the greater amenities on offer on the Sinfonia, as well as an expanded cruise schedule.

The Opera has both balcony cabins and balcony suites, which means more people can have a private outdoor area to sip their cocktail whilst enjoying the ocean views or sunsets. Heavenly!

The MSC Opera will arrive in Cape Town, South Africa for the first time ever on 19 November 2012 and will operate out of Durban from 22 November 2012 until early March 2013, taking over the popular Mozambique three and four night cruises from the MSC Sinfonia. The MSC Opera will thus be taking over the Sinfonia’s schedules and the Sinfonia will take over the Melody’s schedules

The introduction of the MSC Opera in the next season heralds a new level of cruising in the SA market as it boasts four restaurants, eleven themed bars & lounges, two pools, and two whirlpools. Glass walls form part of the decor in order to best exploit the fabulous ocean views.

Of course, children under 18 will continue to travel free on all MSC cruise ships, making this a great family get away. To cater for their tastes, the MSC Opera has a disco, video games room (with virtual reality games), internet café and the Buffalo Bill children’s play area.

For those planning a corporate get away for their organisation, it also features a high-tech vision sharing system, which will allow vision from any given source on the ship to be shared throughout the ship, or to specific lounges or public areas. Wi-fi Internet connection is available in all public areas.

If you have been hesitating about jumping onto the cruise bandwagon, you had better jump on feet-first, before you get left behind!

The mere mention of statistics is enough to put me to sleep. However, when it comes down to the difference between being late and on time, I tend to pay attention.
If you have ever spent so much time at an airport that you were able to forget your name, but remember every single item in all the shops, I feel your pain. Fortunately, to help minimise time at airports, ACSA recently released the on-time stats of local airlines.

So that you know how they worked it out, here is an extract from their website: “Airport operational efficiency is measured through different measures, with On-Time Performance being the primary internationally accepted standard. On-Time Performance is measured by comparing the actual off-block time (when aircraft pushes back) against the airline schedule time for a departing flight. The measurement is done in accordance with the IATA (International Airlines Transport Association) universal standard benchmark which considers a 15 minute deviation from the scheduled time as an on-time departure. The On-Time Performance of the airlines is averaged for a specific airport to produce On-Time Performance for the airport. This is bench marked against a target which is agreed upon by the airport stakeholders.”

So, if you want to be on time, your best bet would be SAA. If you don’t really care too much and don’t risk the dissolution of an important relationship, you can go with Kulula. The below is an average percentage based on the various airlines departing from Cape Town, OR Tambo and King Shaka International Airports.

If you really love duty free shopping and are always last on the plane, stumbling under the weight of all your bags, you should opt to depart from O.R. Tambo.

The below is an average percentage based on the flights departing on time from the various airports.

You can’t really choose from which airport you’d like to depart, but if money is no object, you are now armed with some good information as to which airlines to fly with. Sometimes it is worth the extra R300 to be on time, rather than miss a connecting flight, or even worse, your cruise! I fondly remember clients who were meant to catch the MSC Sinfonia cruise ship. They were in the unfortunate position of not only being late, but lost! In the end they found a police station and managed to get a police escort to the harbour!

If you are a bargain hunter like me and generally use search engines to find the cheapest flight out there, you will just have to take the risks of enjoying the delights of what the various airports have to offer.

To kick off your summer holiday you might be looking for cheap local flights. Velvet Sky airline might just be the answer. They are running “December specials” (which actually are also available on some dates after December, and are available only on some dates in December…but hopefully you’ll get luck and they’ll be there on your dates):

• Johannesburg to Durban from R343
• Johannesburg to Polokwane from R310
• Johannesburg to Cape Town from R529
• Durban to Port Elizabeth from R439
• Durban to Cape Town from R439
• Port Elizabeth to Cape Town from R439

Even on the dates when the special isn’t available I’ve noticed that Velvet Sky airline is often cheapest. You can book the flights by calling 0861-835-838 or at Velvet Sky reservations.

When I was younger, I always came up with the most ingenious ways of concealing alcohol.  Ah, the sneaky bottle of juice upended and refilled with a mix of vodka and orange juice, or the 2 litre Coke bottle emptied and refilled with brandy and coke.  The half jack of Old Brown Sherry stashed away in my girly handbag.

I’m not proud of it, but it happened.

Now that I am of a more respectable age, sneaking booze into places is mostly frowned upon by my peers.  Even letting someone find out that you are in fact just refilling the same, posh wine bottle with wine from a cheap 5 litre box, is enough to have you cast out into the shadows, away from the warming flicker of the braai.

Which leads me to the following question:  Why would people of a respectable age (like me) try to sneak alcohol onto a cruise ship?  If you can afford to go on a cruise, you can afford to buy the drinks on board.  Agreed, the prices are a tad on the expensive side and from experience, I can say that the cocktails are a bit lacking, but if you really want it, you can get it.  As long as you pay for it.  It is after all, a fancy cruise ship.  A massive, self-contained, floating village, if you like.  Nothing comes in, nothing goes out.  Except of course the passengers, but you get the idea.

When I went on a cruise in January this year, I noticed a lot of booze standing around when we were checking in.  Some people seriously thought they’d be able to take crates of beer with them on board, in their hand luggage!  It’s like turning up with a bag of McDonald’s at a 5 star hotel, who does that?

Royal Caribbean has said that, if they catch you trying to smuggle vodka onto the ship disguised as water, they will destroy it on the spot!  How exactly, I’m not sure (destruction by fire breather/toilet/bergie).   I do think they should give the passenger carrying the offensive liquor the option to consume it on the spot.  You will feel like hell the next day, but at least you wouldn’t feel like you wasted the money!

The funny thing is, if they catch you trying to sneak bottles of booze onto the ship in their original containers, they will still take it from you, but will return it to you after the cruise.  One of the lessons to learn here is, if you want to be sneaky, at least do so with a bit of integrity and keep it in its original container.

The real lesson is of course to NOT do it to begin with, you are sure to keep bumping into the person who stood behind you in the queue as your drinks were confiscated.  And you just know that they will be sitting at the same table for dinner!

The travel industry is a competitive one, one of the most competitive in fact, so being innovative isn’t easy as most things have already been done. Virgin have come up with a pretty wicked idea – book your holiday based on the weather you want to experience. What I mean by this is, if you want a holiday with lots of sunny weather, the system will give you suggestions based on this.

The team of students put together a video to explain the system, which really does cover everything. Give it a watch, it’s a wicked system.

Click play:

I dig it!

Do you remember this song from back in the day?

We’re all going on a summer holiday
no more working for a week or two
Fun and laughter on our summer holiday,
no more worries for me or you,
for a week or two

We’re going where the sun shines brightly
we’re going where the sea is blue
we’ve all seen it on the movies,
now let’s see if it’s true

Everybody has a summer holiday
doin’ things they always wanted to
So we’re going on a summer holiday,
to make our dreams come true
for me and you
for me and you

Did you just sing the words in your mind? :) The end of the year is around the corner and December holidays are in sight! No doubt many of us are looking forward to getting away for some sun, fun and relaxation. With that in mind, have a look at these tropical holiday summer specials recently spotted on www.simplytravel.co.za.

Mauritius

Seychelles

Some good specials there! Most of us, though, will probably stay closer to home, heading to SA’s beautiful beaches, bush and “berge” for our time off.

Where would you go/recommend for an awesome summer holiday?

I was on holiday in the south of France this month when I heard about “couch surfing” for the first time.  It’s the latest fad in travel, whereby instead of paying for hotels you stay at other people’s houses for free (yes,  there are many generous souls in this world).   Several of my French were offering up their places on the couch surfing website, but mostly men, and we had a lot of fun discussing their motives for doing so.  Especially when the men reluctantly agreed that they pretty much only allowed female couch surfers to come stay with them (when the males contact them, they just say they’re busy).

I’m not planning on giving up my family’s much-loved privacy, but for journalism’s sake I signed up to the Couch Surfing program.  The site offers the option of verification, whereby you can confirm your identity with a credit card and verify your location by letting them send snail mail to your postal address with a code which you then type into the website.   When people meet up they also do a write-up, and these are perhaps the most interesting ways of assessing them.

I did a search on folk who’re letting people sleep at their spots in Cape Town.  You can specify the age of your host, whether you want a male or female host (feels a bit like a dating service!) and whether they must have a photo.  In Cape Town you can choose from 489 hosts, including Gerhard who is verified, vouched for by others and has a 100% reply rate, and Natasha who’s “up for (almost) anything”.

London has expensive accommodation prices.  Well, next time I’m there instead of paying why not stay with Andrea, who tries to host as many people as she can.  Francisco says “Andrea is a great host! I was lucky because she happened to be free much of the time I was at her place, so she showed me around St. Albans. Also, I met some interesting people at her house and I eventually went dancing with a couple of her friends at the weekend.  The house was confortable, the atmosphere was great and I was able to relax at the end of very eventful days.  Simon, her husband, is a great bloke! He’s really great fun, too!”

The couch surfing site doesn’t restrict itself to accommodation – there are also events being organised.  I saw people wanting to share a car hire and expenses – “We want to rent a car for almost 3 weeks and make a trip round Western Cape visiting national parks and cities in this side of the world.  We would like to share a car and the trip with someone, it’s definitely much more fun! and it’s also cheaper for all of us.”  And a potluck in Worcester – “We are inviting you to a potluck at our house in Worcester on Sunday 2 October @ 12:00.  A potluck is a gathering of people where each person or group of people contributes a dish of food to be shared among the group. CouchSurfing events are always a good place to meet fellow CouchSurfers, get to know your community, meet travellers, make new friends and contacts and even meet possible future travel partners.”

Do you have plans to celebrate National Braai Day in true Saffa style? If you plan to braai on Saturday (or ever, actually), read this illuminating article from Justin Bonello’s journal first.

Fair Game?

I am sad to the core.

On Saturday I got a call from Bool Smuts of the Landmark Foundation, an NGO that specialises in building the conservation economy. One of their projects is the conservation of apex predators. They had trapped a leopard on a farm near Hermanus – a cause for great celebration, because now it meant that this leopard actually had a chance of survival. Me? I am so amazed that a leopard was found in just off the urban belt of the Western Cape and that it has survived everything we’ve thrown at it. Sad fact is that survival for these predators is becoming tenuous.

Isn’t it scary to think that our wildlife can no longer protect itself and that bit-by-bit it’s all disappearing?

The farmer (who reported livestock losses) had agreed to take part in the Landmark Foundation’s conservation efforts and helped set up and monitor a high-tech trap. So this weekend Bool’s team sedated the leopard and put a GPS collar around his neck. This collar works with GSM technologies, which means that it works with a cell phone signal. If you’re a parent and you’ve got a teenager, chances are you have a rule that your kid has to send you an sms to let you know where they are and that they’re safe. This collar works exactly like that – the Landmark research team receive weekly emails from the leopard telling them that he’s safe and showing them where he’s been. Ultimately one of Landmark’s goals is to understand leopard movements and thus safeguard leopards in a bid to increase suitable landscape and habitats for predators and biodiversity outside of protected areas.

Most farmers, however, are dead set against Bool Smuts methods of non-lethal predator control, so much so that he’s received serious death threats. But Bool is not deterred. And it’s in the spirit of what I’ve experienced and seen that I’m no longer willing to keep quiet either.
The Landmark Foundation has saved the lives of about 40 of our spotted friends, but in that time 38 more have perished as a result of gin traps, poisons and hunting. If you’re wondering why you should care, I’ll tell you: Western Cape leopards are being wiped off the planet at an alarming rate, following the same sad story as that of the Western Cape elephants. The way they’re exterminated is just different: If they don’t get killed in gin-traps, a device so horrific that some animals try to chew off their legs trying to escape, they are poisoned or hunted down.

You’ve got to stop for a moment and think. What has happened to our rhinos? Our lions? Cheetahs? The big giants that once roamed our country freely and without fear? The elephants of Knysna and even Table Mountain? These days, when I drive through Cape Town it’s hard to see it as one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It’s become sterile and almost ugly (luckily we have mountains and an ocean view to blindfold us).

It wasn’t always like this, but slowly and surely the human mindset of ‘everything is rightfully ours’ has taken over and destroyed just about everything in its wake. This human condition is extremely destructive, but luckily there are a handful of brave individuals willing to salvage what’s left through their conservation efforts. But, there is a point where the responsibility stops with them and starts with us.

It’s obvious that not everyone was born a veterinarian or a wildlife researcher, but one thing we all have in common is the power of choice. I’m not saying go out into the bush and try to track a leopard. What I’m trying to get across is that change starts with the smallest of steps, something I didn’t act on until recently. My experiences of the last few years have changed me in way I can no longer ignore.

As a consumer, you have a choice and when you make the ethical choice, you become a protector of our country’s biodiversity. If you’ve been following my work of the last year, you might know about my talk “The Great Food Hoodwink.” It deals with the issues of where our food really comes from and what’s actually in it. Problem is, now, the more deeply I delve into this topic, the more limitations I have on my weekly shopping list and the food I’m willing to buy. I can no longer just buy free-range beef, mutton or lamb. If it doesn’t say ‘Fair Game’ or ‘Predator Friendly’ on the packaging, I might be supporting gin-traps and the indiscriminate killing of leopards and black-back jackal populations without knowing it. And that would mean I’m responsible for killing more than just the piece of meat on my plate.

I’m not one for preaching, but I can’t turn a blind eye. If you’re informed about what’s really going on, then surely you should make the ethical choice and vote with your money. If we don’t start making smarter choices today, the only leopard the generations after us might ever see will be the picture on the South African R200 note. If you’ve ever seen a leopard up close, you’ll understand just how heart breaking the thought of that is.
Read more about The Landmark Foundation and the work they do, see how you can get involved and share this message with your friends.
Justin.

Hats off to Justin, Bool and The Landmark Foundation for being part of the positive solution to a serious problem.

Will this post affect the way you shop/eat/live in future? Let us know in the comments.

Glenn Orsmond has recently resigned as Chief Executive of 1time airline, with his place being taken by Blacky Komani, a non-executive director of the airline.  Whilst Glenn has been with the airline for quite some time, it’s not unexpected that he’s leaving as the company has been underperforming.

1time airline has some great qualities – I love flying with them not just because of their low prices, but as in my experience they offer above average legroom, are very good with children, efficient at checking pax in, have a good menu and fly to interesting destinations (like Livingstone and Zanzibar).

So, how can they improve further?  Let’s start with the fact that this morning I received a happy birthday letter from Kulula – but nothing from any other airline.  Kulula has successfully cultivated a deeper relationship with its pax than any other airline.

I build up loads of Kulula moolah with my Kulula credit card – 3% of the first R5000 I spend – what other credit card gives you so much back?  Of course the trick is that you’ve got to spend it within 6 months of obtaining it, but I fly a lot, and so it’s never been a problem (on the only occasion I couldn’t use it, I gave it away to a family member).  As  a Kulula credit card holder I also get 5kg extra baggage allowance.   Kulula also have their Jetsetters club, whereby you can earn extra Kulula moolah for flying with them.   For these reasons, if Kulula’s flight prices are in the range of other airlines, I will almost always choose to fly Kulula.

Some of 1time’s strategy going forward is going to be about playing catch-up, eating humble pie and copying – I would see developing a credit card and loyalty program as being part of that.

However, other parts of 1time’s strategy can be about taking the lead.  I am surprised that no South African low-cost carrier has implemented aspects such as paying for luggage and checking in.  It would be a big step and would annoy some clients, but would result in 1time having less administration costs, and other airlines higher administration costs.  The business model is proven in Europe.

Another novel initiative could be for 1time to introduce an affiliate program, whereby they pay website owners a small percentage of each booking for diverting them to 1time airline – I remain surprised that this is an area which most airlines haven’t been targeting (yet) in South Africa (overseas many airlines have affiliate programs).

Good luck Blacky!  Our family own a number of 1time shares, and we’d love to see you turn it around.