Celebrate Spring!

What better way to celebrate spring than to put together a lunch, grab your loved ones and head out to a favourite picnic spot? 

Here are the Top 10 Picnic Spots in our country (proud Cape Townians, see how many are right here in our backyard!):

1. Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens (pictured above)

2. Sandy Bay Beach

3. Melkbosstrand

4. Mbashe River

5. Union Buildings gardens

6. Walter Sisulu National Botanical Garden

7. Modjadji Cycad Forest Reserve at Ga-Modjadji

8. Vredefort Dome

9. Beachwood Mangroves Nature Reserve

10. The Indian Ocean  ... one assumes they mean any beach on the East coast ;-)

(as listed by SA Tourism - www.southafrica.net)

September events - Cape Town

Here are a few not-to-be-missed events happening in and around Cape Town in September:


1.   Nando's Cape Town Comedy Festival
      Date - 30 August to 19 September 2010
      Venues - Baxter Theater and the V&A Waterfront
      Tickets available at Computicket

The largest comedy festival in South Africa (and one of the top 5 in the world), Nando's has been bringing together top international and local comedy acts for more than a decade. This year's festival will feature Trevor Noah, Jonathan Arons, Ian Bagg and Orny Adams, among others, to amuse audiences of all ages and tastes with a selection of the most popular acts being showcased on Sunday evenings for the duration of the festival.

2.    Cape Homemakers Expo
       Date - 2 to 5 September 2010
       Venue - CTICC
       More information available at www.homemakersonline.co.za

Every year the Homemakers Expo brings together a showcase a variety of home improvement and decor products and accessories.

3.   Kirstenbosch Biennale
      Date - 5 to 24 September 2010
      Location - Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens
      Entry is free. Information available on tel: 021 799 8782
      or from kirstenboschinfo@sanbi.org.za

A must for any art lover ready to enjoy the wonderful weather and explosion of natural beauty that accompanies the advent of spring in the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. Botanical art, focussing on rare, endangered and narrow endemic species indigenous to Southern Africa, produced by the best local and international artists will be on show in this beautiful setting.

4.   Paarl Cultivaria Festival
      Date - 23 to 26 September 2010
      Location - Paarl
      More information available from the Cultivaria Festival Office 
      (tel: 021 872 9754) or www.cultivaria.com

This unique event offers a programme packed with various musical genres, theatre productions, dance shows, comedy, classical music and art, from the country's top performers, to delight and amaze visitors at various venues around the town. There are also open-plan entertainment areas, including the Bokomo Kitchen where visitors can hone their cooking skills with live demonstrations. Children are also catered for.

Tourism booming thanks to the 2010 World Cup

With South Africa's scenic beauty, tremendous cultural history, fascinating fauna and flora and climate and landscape encouraging adventure, tourism has long been one of the fastest growing sectors in our economy.

The 2010 FIFA World Cup has now come and gone along with all the hype and hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors, but in its wake it left a great optimism and a lasting positive impression of South Africa which is expected to cause a boom in the South African tourism industry in the next 2 years. The world-class effort made to host the World Cup destroyed many of the common ideas that South Africa is "backward", "unsafe" and still "stuck in its old and evil ways". The high standards achieved by our tourism industry were also acknowledged at the annual World Travel Awards for Africa (held in July 2010) where  South African Airways, OR International Airport (Johannesburg), The Hilton Hotel in Durban, the cities of Cape Town and Durban and the Blue Train, to name just a few, all received tremendous accolades.

President Jacob Zuma recently noted that:
'The social benefits are priceless. We have seen remarkable unity, patriotism and solidarity being displayed by South Africans, which has never been witnessed before.'

The optimism globally and locally cannot be understated or undervalued and has brought about initiatives to build on the tournament's positive effects, such as the 1Goal and LeadSA campaigns. The great praise and media coverage South Africa received will no doubt bring about renewed vigour in the tourism industry, but along with that we hope that the "can do" spirit of ordinary people coming together and being proud of who we are and what we have achieved, will be an abiding legacy of the 2010 World Cup.

Close encounters with majestic creatures of the deep!

There are many places you can go to have a close encounters with a shark, but that's an adrenalin rush that doesn't appeal to everyone. For a more tranquil experience, whale watching is the way to go and in South Africa one place famous for its whales immediately springs to mind - Hermanus.

Hermanus is a seaside town, about an hour and a half from Cape Town, that is graced by the presence of Southern Right Whales every year when they come to the warm and shallow waters along Hermanus' cliffs to mate and calf.  August to November is the best time to view these majestic creature of the deep and they can be observed from the cliff paths or from boats providing whale watching safaris.

The town hosts the Hermanus Whale Festival annually to encourage conservation of marine life and attract visitors in September - the whale watching high season and when the more temperate and sunny Spring weather draws us out of doors. Local artists also use the opportunity to add to the festive atmosphere, making it the only "enviro-arts" festival in the country. In 2009 the festival attracted 100 000 visitors.

For more information visit www.whalefestival.co.za or www.hermanus.co.za.