The Daily Currents , the ship’s daily, shares information either about the places we are visiting or on sea days gives general information about the world. Today it has to do with continents, and I found it very interesting so I am recording for my future information.
Due to my recent affiliation with McCabe World Travel in McLean, VA I took a trip to D.C. this week. The main purpose was to spend a day in the McCabe office and the other to visit the Virtuoso Hotels. There are currently 9 Virtuoso properties in D.C. and I was able to check out 8 of them yesterday. They were all fantastic and unique in their own way.
Sailing into Antalya was very pretty. A long narrow strip of Beach with very high mountains in background made it feel like sailing into a half circle. At certain times of the years once can travel 45 minutes into the mountains and snow ski and then come back to the beach and swim.
According to tradition in the second century BC King Attalos II ordered his men to find "heaven on earth". After an extensive search, they discovered the region of Antalya and the King agreed that heaven on earth had been found.
We arrived at the ship and immediately headed to The Waves Cafe for one of their wonderful hamburgers. We got unpacked and even ended up with a couple of inches if space left.
Today marks a month from the start of Virtuoso Travel Week 2014. It feels like months have gone by since this epic travel conference. I could not let any more time go by without doing a little recap so here it goes. When I tell clients I will be in Vegas for a week to attend Virtuoso Travel Week they tell me to have a great time with the misconception that it is just a week of Vegas gambling, partying, and eating at the most fabulous restaurants. While all of this is completely true about Vegas, this is not the main purpose of this annual retreat.
We were up early for a very nice breakfast at the hotel and off on the tour to Montserrat, about an hour out of Barcelona. Other than the munchkin room; the hotel is very nice, and the staff is very friendly and helpful.
Today we are in Richard's Bay, still South Africa. Richards Bay is home to a vast population of aquatic birds and is where hunter John Dunn shot the longest crocodile ever recorded in South Africa, a whopping 22 feet. We were on a waiting list for another game drive, in Hluhwwe, pronounced Shoo shoo we. We did get on so we chose to go to St. Lucia Wetland Nature Reserve and we were happy that we did as we finished our big Five sighting when we we saw a buffalo standing on the edge of the water.
Day 13- This morning we arrived at Cape Town and transferred to the Beautiful Cape Grace Hotel. One of our amenities there was to be a room upgrade subject to availability. Due to the Holidays the hotel was full but when we got to our room it was so lovely that we could not imagine how much nicer the upgrade would have been. We also had free access to the Mini bar plus a free bottle of wine.
Day 8: Yesterday was our last day at Eagle Island. At 7:15 am we left for our second helicopter ride. That is a great way to really observe the animals. We saw many different spices and it was great to see the fish eagle from above. After that we did a drive but Eagle Island is really a place for the water animals. We did see a very large dazzle of zebras and some of the smaller mammals.
Day 5: Left Khawi this morning about 11:30 in a 5 seater plane. As we were leaving, Andrea the pilot (better than the name Zizzy, right??) said "look behind you if we had left 5 minutes later we would have been in a huge storm." We flew about 30 minutes to Eagle Creek over the Okavango Delta. The view from a small plane is great and I was able to spot a family of elephants crossing a river.
