Show me a picture of an old windmill at sunset, the scrubby vegetation of the Karoo dusty in the foreground, and I’m anyone’s.
I’m pretty sure every South African worth his or her baboetie loves the Karoo as much as we love rugby and soccer: like them, it goes to the very heart of what we are. But like them, too, it looks simple (wide flat horizons, silence, heat) at first glance – but it hides a depth that’s breathtaking.
Jonathan Deal’s book (published in hardcover by Struik Nature) provides as comprehensive an overview of the Karoo as you can fit into 208 pages; It wanders through the Central Karoo, the Northern and Upper Karoo, the Great Karoo, the Hantam and Tankwa Karoo, and the Klein Karoo – and that’s a huge area to cover.
Of course the nice thing about a book like this is that you don’t have to read it in a straight line: you can amble this way and that, pick up on a favourite destination, let your mind linger over an evocative image – and this is where I have a gripe. So many of the entries for the towns and villages along the way begin with the tired old “Situated 60 km from X-ville and 40 km from Y.”
You’d think there’d be more interesting reasons to visit…
Still, this seems to be a general problem with tourism marketing: so many people think that location means everything, when it’s the stories, or the fantastic natural phenomena, or the culture that usually motivate us to visit.
But don’t let this put you off: for the rest, the stories, the phenomena, and the culture are here – in abundance. And that’s why you need this book in your guest library. It’s so well put together, so interesting, so visually appealing, that it makes you just long to explore every rock and bush and coffee shop and museum and gallery and church and windpomp that’s out there. And it’ll make your guess want to, too.
Buy it at here
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Sean Fraser uses a well-practiced eye and obvious technical mastery to create a perfect coffee-table book (published by Struik Travel & Heritage) that showcases this country’s great beauty and amazing variety.
Of course it’s a mostly a polished view of South Africa – a look at nothing but the magnificence of the country and its most beautiful people – but that’s exactly what you want in a book like this.
It’s a bit short on text, but this isn’t a book you read: it’s made for staring, dreaming, and travelling. And it’s the ideal thing to stimulate anyone who pages through it to get out and explore our landscape, our wildlife, our history, and our culture – so you’ll want to display it in your reception, and you’ll want a copy or two for your quest lounge.
Buy it here:
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Responsible tourism ‘creates better places to visit, and better places to live in’ – but the hidden challenge, the one we’re so damned good at avoiding, is the question of transport. We’ll never have a sustainable (and therefore responsible) tourism industry until we have a sustainable transport industry.
But the bicycle comes close.
There’s no doubt that cycling is growing in South Africa – as it is in the rest of the world. Here, though, it seems currently to be the new golf: a sport filled with alpha males aggressively interested only in the races they can enter, and the times (and the competitors) they can beat. And that’s sad.
Hopefully, though, this’ll change and non-competitive mountain bike touring will take off in the very near future. And if this happens, it’ll be because of books like this one by Dave Bristow and Steve Thomas.
“The Spine of the Dragon trail and this guide to riding it are not an exact science,” they tell us. “The riding was designed to be fun, and the route was designed to be flexible.”
They divide the trail – like their book – into nine sections, “each one of which could be ridden as a shorter mountain biking holiday. Each section is further broken down into stages… a total of 58… each equivalent to a day’s riding.”
This books is a delight to read. You get the feeling that MTB touring ought to be a laid-back, relaxed affair, and here’s how you can achieve this. But cycling’s also a highly practical affair, and the advice here will be valuable to anyone on the road.
You’ll want to own ‘Riding the Dragon’s Spine’ if you love to ride. And if you’ve a guest house anywhere along that spine – the mountain ranges of western Limpopo and Mpumalanga, eastern KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Eastern Cape, Western Cape – you have to make it available in your guest library if for no other reason than that it’s sure to excite your guests’ interest.
And that usually leads to extended bookings…
‘Riding the Dragon’s Spine: Beit Bridge to Cape Town’ is published by Struik Travel and Heritage.
Buy it in the format of your choice:
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This is the guidebook that’ll make that privilege so much more enjoyable.
It contains a monthly sky diary that includes “easy-to-use sky maps showing interesting naked-eye sights typically at dusk or at dawn, involving the Moon, planets, and bright stars,” as well as lists of celestial events, notes on the visibility of the planets and the constellations, and the rising and setting times of the Sun and the Moon.
But that fills only about half of the pages in this fascinating little softcover: for the rest you’ll find articles about the Sun, the Moon, and the planets – and asteroids, comets, meteors, stars and constellations; and about observing skills and equipment; and about astronomy in South Africa. There’s also a comprehensive glossary, and a beautiful (but too small) picture gallery.
You need this one in your guest library if you’ve an accommodation place anywhere near where people might spend time contemplating our Southern Sky.
Sky Guide Africa South 2013: The Astronomical Handbook for Southern Africa is published jointly by the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa and Struik Nature.
Buy it in softcover here
]]>And while restios do grow in Australia (about 150 species), New Zealand (four), South America, and South East Asia (just one each), it’s only in South Africa (Africa has about 357 species) that they totally dominate the vegetation in the areas in which they thrive.
It’s worth knowing more about them because they’re often useful garden plants – they’re usually water-efficient, and almost always striking in their appearance – and because understanding their ecology is key to understanding the ecology of the fynbos as a whole (most laypeople will probably find the chapters which introduce the restios to be the most interesting and valuable).
If you own a guest house anywhere in or near the fynbos – you’ll want this one in your guest library.
Restios of the Fynbos by Els Dorrat-Haaksma and H Peter Linder is published in softcover and ebook by Struik Nature, and it’s available at the BarefootBookshop.
Buy it in softcover here
Buy the Ebook here
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Responsible travel means responsible eating. Which is why – if you love seafood – you need Hennie Crous’s ‘Catch it Cook it in Southern Africa.’
Besides the usual stuff – bait, tackle, the habits of the fish, the recipes, the funny fishy tales – this book offers something we haven’t seen nearly enough: it explains the conservation status of each of the 30 or so species it describes, and for that reason alone it’s worth having in your guest library, and on your kitchen shelf.
Surely by now you’ve seen the distinctive SASSI (Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative) logo – a green, a yellow, and a red fish on a deep blue background – and you know what it’s all about educating us about which fish to buy and which to avoid so that we can ensure the sustainability of our seafood.
The greens are the best to have: they can handle current fishing pressure (green-lipped mussel, Atlantic herring, South African squid). The orange species … well, here you should think twice: Cape dory, rock cod, African catfish – they’re described as “giving reason for concern, either because the species is depleted as a result of overfishing… or the fishery that catches them may cause particularly severe environmental damage…”
And then you have the reds. Or, more correctly, you shouldn’t have the reds at all: the galjoen, the jacobever, the baardman. These are the unsustainable species, the collapsed populations, the ones that’ve been totally inappropriately managed.
Fiona Ayerst – who represents SASSI on the Garden Route – says the only way to get local restaurants to buy into the idea that you simply must not serve some types of fish is by educating the consumer: “If they won’t buy them, the restaurants won’t stock them.”
So this is another reason why Catch it Cook it in Southern Africa is a great book to have: it’s as much an educational resource as a cookbook, and as much a personal memoir as a guide.
Buy it here.
NOTE: Fiona Ayerst is available to talk about SASSI – and which fish to eat and which to avoid – to consumer or industry groups on the Garden Route. Contact her via www.oceans-society,org, or Fiona[at]fionaayerst.com.
More information: www.wwfsassi.co.za
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‘Kistenbosch: the most beautiful garden in Africa’ by Brian J. Huntley, with photographs by Adam Harrower and others.
Buy it here.
The always amazing Kirstenbosch Gardens will celebrate their centenary this year – and that’s a frightening thought, because it means I’ve been visiting them for almost half of their lifetime.
Forty eight years, to be precise.
I remember that first time. They took me to Lady Anne Barnard’s Bath, and even at six years of age I realised that the tannie must’ve been nuts: the water was freezing – and this was summer! But now at 54, I’ve learned from Brian J. Huntley’s equally magnificent new book that the name is a romantic folly: the tannie actually left the Cape before the bird-shaped thing was built. And I’ve learned, too, that the shape is the clue to its origins: it was built by a certain Colonel Christopher Bird, who bought the land from the Colonial Government, which had in turn taken it over from the Dutch East India Company – and sold it on account the money was needed to pay for the upkeep of the Colony.
This is what makes the first part of the book such a great read: it’s filled with stories and anecdotes (although mebbe they’re told a little more – um – formally).
Next we get a look at the construction and development of the Gardens, and at the challenges and triumphs that always attend this kind of project. I, of course, loved the story of how Brian Rycroft – the first South African director of the National Botanic Gardens, and a figure who loomed huge to those of us who studied horticulture and of the botanical sciences in the early 80s – fought the Municipality of Cape Town when it threatened to cut the place in half with a highway.
Dat hy sy stryd gewen het! Man, ek’t so lekker gekry…
The book continues with chapters on the Cape Floral Kingdom, and on subjects like plant conservation through collection, the natural and man-made climates of the Gardens – and the plants they contain – and how the Gardens contribute to the science of conservation (‘Understanding the workings of nature’). And it ends with discussions on how it’s achieved financial stability, and on the network of Botanic Gardens that has now been established across the country.
By 2005, the National Botanic Gardens were turning a profit, and they no longer needed help from the government – and part of the reason for this was the fact that Kirstenbosch was transformed fro being a show garden to the point where it became an exciting resource for the widest possible spectrum of ecologists, landscapers, garden lovers – and, in fact, the nation as a whole.
At a hundred years old, Kirstenbosch has come of age, and we in the tourism industry should celebrate this.
I can think of no better way to do so than by stocking your guest library with at least one copy of the impeccably researched ‘Kistenbosch: the most beautiful garden in Africa.’
It’s superbly illustrated (I’m running out of superlatives here, guys!) – Adam Harrower took most of the images of the Gardens as they are today, and it’s packed with historic photos, too. It’s available in soft back and as an e-book – and you can buy it here.
‘Kistenbosch: the most beautiful garden in Africa’ is published by Struik Nature, with the assistance of SANBI (the South African Biodiversity Institute), and the Botanical Society of South Africa.
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OUTA (the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance) is pleased at being granted leave to appeal the High Court judgment of 13 December 2012, and expresses the alliance’s sincere belief that their case to halt eTolls has strong grounds, which we trust will eventually obtain the ruling that SANRAL’s current eToll plans are illegal.
There is no doubting the fact that society has overwhelmingly rejected this plan as too expensive, inefficient, unworkable and a most irrational waste of their money. OUTA has never denounced the benefit and need for the freeway upgrade, and neither has it argued that society does not need to pay for the upgrade. We have simply indicated that projects of this nature require the correct and meaningful public participation process to be undertaken and with the best interests of society being considered at all times and that this project is extremely costly and onerous on society.
We are mindful of the fact that SANRAL can proceed with eTolling in the meantime, until the appeal is heard later in the year at the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA), but they will have to do so knowing full well that the SCA could rule the scheme as illegal, in which case it may have to be halted.
We also note that it was in August 2012 that SANRAL argued in the Constitutional Court their readiness to launch within two weeks of the interdict being set aside. We are now four months beyond that ruling and eTolling is still unable to launch. Their systems continue to undergoing testing and a number of regulatory matters are still outstanding. In fact, it is now almost two years beyond their first planned launch date of April 2011, and they are unable to launch. We believe this is a significant signal of the administratively burdensome nature and unworkability of this project.
OUTA calls for a public release of the recommendations for eTolling to commence, provided to cabinet by the Inter Ministerial Committee (IMC) last year. In addition, OUTA also looks forward to the release of feedback from the Department of Transport on the views expressed by the public during their public engagement sessions, along with the summary of the thousands of public submissions on tariffs and exemptions conducted during November.
OUTA wishes to thank the thousands of citizens and hundreds of businesses that have contributed to funding this campaign and we urge all citizens and businesses to continue to assist with donations toward the legal costs of the case. Thus far, we have successfully raised over R8 million and are over two thirds of the way to our target of R11.8 million. Donations can be made at www.outa.co.za
Wayne Duvenage
Chairperson – OUTA www.outa.co.za
]]>Fall in love with responsible travel February 11-17 as Planeta.com hosts our fifth annual Responsible Travel Week, a week-long unconference that kicks off 2013 in fine style. A great plus: admission is free and there’s no jet lag!
The friendly confab takes place online and around the world through a series of local events organized by participants.
2013 is the fifth year for Responsible Travel Week and Planeta.com’s 13th year of innovative conferencing. We expect our global conversation to take a great leap forward thanks to inspired participation. There are plenty of ways to get involved.
Responsible Travel Week amplifies down-to-earth applications of noble concepts including responsible travel, conscious travel, the local travel movement and ecotourism with the inexpensive social web. The event is free to attend. Introduce yourself through the Facebook event page, Google+ and via Twitter (hashtag: #rtweek2013).
We welcome financial sponsors, including individuals and institutions willing to invest in a more formal approach, including awards and workshops focused on digital literacy training.
Details on
- The Planeta Wiki http://planeta.wikispaces.com/rtweek2013
- Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/planeta/rtweek2013
- Storify http://storify.com/ronmader/rtweek2013
- Facebook https://www.facebook.com/events/443927398952987
- Google+ https://plus.google.com/events/csas42kh37cceb4j8qcrf57o550
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One billion tourists have travelled the world in 2012, marking a new record for international tourism – a sector that accounts for one in every 12 jobs and 30% of the world’s services exports. On the symbolic arrival date of the one-billionth tourist (13 December 2012), UNWTO revealed the actions tourists can take to ensure their trips benefit the people and places they visit, as voted by the public.
International tourism has continued to grow in 2012, despite global economic uncertainty, to reach over one billion international tourist arrivals. The figure cements tourism’s position as one of the world’s largest economic sectors, accounting for 9% of global GDP (direct, indirect and induced impact), one in every 12 jobs and up to 8% of the total exports of the world’s Least Developed Countries (LDCs).
Recalling the positive impact even the smallest action can have if multiplied by one billion, UNWTO launched the One Billion Tourists: One Billion Opportunities campaign to celebrate this milestone, showing tourists that respecting local culture, preserving heritage or buying local goods when travelling can make a big difference. The public was asked to vote for the Travel Tip that would have the greatest benefit for the people and places they visit and to pledge to follow that tip when traveling.
The winning tip, revealed on the arrival date of the one-billionth tourist, was Buy Local, encouraging tourists to buy food and souvenirs locally, or hire local guides, to ensure their spending translates into jobs and income for host communities. A close second, Respect Local Culture calls on tourists to learn more about their destination’s traditions, or some words in the local language, before leaving home.
“Today, we welcome the symbolic arrival of the one-billionth tourist” said UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai. “Your actions count. That is our message to the one billion tourists. Through the right actions and choices, each tourist represents an opportunity for a fairer, more inclusive and more sustainable future.”
As it is impossible to know exactly where the one-billionth tourist arrived, many countries are celebrating the occasion by welcoming tourists arriving on 13 December. UNWTO is celebrating in Madrid, Spain, home to its headquarters, by welcoming the symbolic one-billionth tourist in the Museo del Prado, Madrid’s most-visited tourism attraction, together with the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism of Spain.
Relevant links:
- One Billion Tourists: One Billion Opportunities
- To see where the one billion tourists come from, where they travel to, how they get there and what their trips mean for development, see the One Billion Tourists infographics
- UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai, on the importance of reaching one billion international tourists