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WOMEN’S TRIP TO SOUTH AFRICA A SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION, PROFESSIONAL EXCHANGE CODE AB
Day 01 ARRIVE CAPE TOWN
Arrival in Cape Town International Airport, meet and transfer to the Commodore Hotel situated at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront.
Conveniently located in the trendy Victoria and Alfred Waterfront - which is regarded as one of the most popular tourism developments in the world - the Commodore Hotel offers stylist accommodations and state-of-the-art conference facilities, attention to detail, service excellence and splendid views of the city in a peaceful and secure environment, assuring comfort, quality and luxury at all times.
Arrive at the hotel and you will be assisted with check-in formalities and escorted to your rooms.
Later this afternoon meet in the lobby for a City Tour and Orientation including Table Mountain cable car (weather permitting). Table Mountain is the defining feature of the Cape Town skyline. It dominates the view from nearly every direction. Ascending to its summit via cable car, one gains appreciation for the sheer natural beauty at the very tip of Africa. After your tour up the Table Mountain you will be transferred to Africa Café Restaurant for a welcome dinner to Cape Town.
This evening your fellow South African women will join for dinner to welcome you to South Africa.
The Africa Café is a delightful restaurant whose walls are bathed in earth tones, evoking the spirit of the entire African continent. Diners are served small items from various regions of the continent (east, west, south, and north). This is our first chance to gather as a group in South Africa and trade initial impressions. Literacy & reading professional will join us.
Overnight at the Commodore Hotel on a bed and breakfast basis
Day 02 CAPE TOWN
This morning enjoy a buffet breakfast at the hotel, before transferring to the South African Women’s Enterprise Offices for meeting and interaction with the local business women.
The SAWEN is an umbrella body used as a strategic vehicle to engage business and government on issues that impact on women owned and managed enterprises and mobilize resources for strengthening these. The SAWEN concept was unanimously adopted at the July 2001 workshop, and a task team was entrusted with the design of the business model that would guide the establishment of SAWEN.
After the meeting, return to the hotel where lunch will be served at a local restaurant at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront.
The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront is the jewel in the crown of Cape Town city’s renaissance since the fall of apartheid. Once a rusty old harbor works, the Waterfront is now anchored by a modern shopping & hotel complex.
This afternoon you will be taken on a historic guided tour of Robben Island the home to Nelson Mandela for 18 years of his jail sentence.
The Ferry departs from the V&A Waterfront and sails across the Table Bay to the Robben Island. A national monument, Robben Island is one of the most significant historical sites in South Africa. First Used by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) as a victualling station, it became an asylum and leper colony. Later, it fell under the Army and Navy and, in 1960, under the Department of Correctional Services.
The island notoriety, as a prison for those considered dangerous to the old South African social order including, for more than two decades, President Mandela, the island’s most famous former prisoner. Once on the island, you will be taken on a guided tour of the old prison, where former prisoners will speak about life in the prison and even show the cell where President Mandela was kept. Thereafter you will have the opportunity to visit the Robben Island Museum and explore a little of the island. The ferry back is braced with spectacular view of Table Mountain that very few people have the opportunity to see.
This evening enjoy dinner at one of Cape Town’s best Jazz Restaurant at the Waterfront – The Green Dolphin Restaurant, most popular for its South African Jazz. Overnight at the Commodore Hotel on a bed and breakfast basis
Day 03 CAPE TOWN
This morning a buffet breakfast will be served at the hotel. Please be ready in the lobby of the hotel for a visit to some women’s projects.
1. Community gardens - in the Townships. These ladies have been developing community gardens for sometime and provides food for the TB clinics in the area. The Clinic staff that the recovery of the patients has been more effective due to the fact that these people are now being fed before treatments has documented it. They also provide assistance and food to AIDS patients, which they treat at home. They provide food from the gardens; they also require funding to purchase the Chemsponge bandages, which heals the wounds associated with this virus.
Lunch will be served at a local restaurant.
This afternoon you will visit the Learn to Earn Women’s Project with your hostess from the Grace Fellowship Africa Church. Here women are taught how to run small businesses, sew, cook and basic computer skills.
Transfer back to the hotel where the rest of the day can be spent at the Waterfront or shopping at the Green Market Square.
This evening dinner is yours at leisure.
Overnight at the Commodore Hotel on a bed and breakfast basis
Day 04 CAPE PENINSULA TOUR
Enjoy a buffet breakfast at the hotel. After breakfast you will meet in the foyer of the hotel and depart in a luxury air-conditioned coach accompanied by your guide, for a day’s sojourn down to the tip of the Cape Peninsula. The drive will take everybody over the ‘Ou Kaapse Weg’ to the east coast of the Peninsula. The False Bay road hugs the mountainside, through the historic village of Simons Town, snaking past Fish Hoek, a popular family beach, Kalk Bay, a fishing village imbued with character and colour, and Muizenburg, renowned for its safe swimming, excellent surfing and colourful bathing boxes. You will end up at the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve.
Cape Point is situated in the reserve, and is where the mighty Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet. The circular drive to Cape Point remains one of the highlights of most visitors that visit the Western Cape. The entire drive to the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve is a kaleidoscope of the colours of fynbos. The reserve itself offers access to a massive completely natural fynbos garden like no other in the world. You can lose yourself in a 7 750ha reserve of indigenous flora and fauna, including baboon, bontebok, zebra, springbok, grey Reebok, eland, Cape grysbok, steenbok, grey mongoose and over 150 species of birds.
You will have the opportunity of either taking the funicular or walking up to the lighthouse where you will see how the Cape Point, the end of the Table Mountain range, is a dramatic and visually awe-inspiring promontory said (erroneously) to divide the Indian and Atlantic Oceans.
After your view of the tip of Africa, board your transport and head to the Roaring Forties Restaurant. Here you will enjoy a wonderful seafood lunch overlooking the spectacular False Bay.
After lunch board the coaches for your trip back to the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront and the hotel via Groot Constantia one of the oldest Wine Estates in South Africa for a cellar tour and wine tasting.
This evening please meet in the lobby for a transfer to the Belugas Restaurant for dinner. A stylish restaurant eatery in the heart of Cape Town’s booming movie and modeling district. The menu blends the best of London and New York trends, with a little global fusion thrown in! Suspended above the cocktail bar is a walk-in wine attic, where the discerning diner is welcome browse for that special bottle of vintage wine.
After dinner transfer back to the hotel.
Overnight at the Commodore Hotel on a bed and breakfast basis
Day 05 CAPE TOWN – JOHANNESBURG
Enjoy a buffet breakfast at the hotel. After breakfast please make sure check out formalities have been completed before transferring to the airport for flight to Johannesburg.
Arrive in Johannesburg International Airport you will be met by our representative and assisted you with your luggage and transfer you to the Apartheid Museum.
The recently opened Apartheid Museum is an extraordinarily well-presented effort to raise awareness about the abuses of South Africa’s apartheid era. Visitors are “classified” racially, much as they are when entering the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. These two fine museums have been favorably compared to one another.
After the tour lunch will be served a Boston BBQ Restaurant at the Gold Reef City Casino Hotel.
Transfer to the Sandton Sun Inter-Continental Hotel, situated in the Sandton City Shopping Mall, on arrival you will be assisted with check in formalities and escorted to your rooms.
Later this afternoon you will be transferred to Lesedi Cultural Village for some South African cultural experiences and dinner.
Travel through the Kromdraii Valley, which is famous for it’s archaeological discoveries, which have resulted in Africa being widely regarded as the cradle of mankind. Lesedi is the first multi-cultural village in South Africa. The tribes represented are Zulu, Sotho, Xhosa and Pedi. A family of the respective tribe hosts each authentic village.
Transfer back to the hotel.
Overnight at the Sandton Sun Hotel on a bed and breakfast basis
Day 06 JOHANNESBURG (SOWETO)
Enjoy breakfast at the hotel, before meeting in the lobby for a day’s visit to Soweto.
You’ll be escorted, via coach, on a well-interpreted tour of Soweto Township. To many, Soweto epitomizes black South Africans’ long struggle for liberty.
A sprawling metropolis about one half-hour’s drive from your hotel, Soweto is a multi-cultural composite of South Africa today. Residents belong to many ethnic groups – primarily Zulu and Xhosa. The relatively spacious homes of middle-class black South Africans exist side-by-side with the much smaller dwellings of mineworkers and other labourer
A tour of Soweto is particularly informative to South Africa’s first-time visitor. You are certain to finish your morning’s visit with a host of unanswered questions and a few brand-new perspectives.
We continue with our tour by visiting some women’s projects and a school in Soweto Township.
Enjoy lunch at Mina’s Place in Protea; you will have an opportunity to meet with the local people who will be happy to share their life experiences during and after apartheid.
Later, this afternoon you will visit a flea market for an African shopping experience. This evening you will join your fellow Johannesburg business women for a reception at a local restaurant, where you will have an opportunity to network and understand how these women are doing in business.
Overnight at the Sandton Sun Hotel on a bed and breakfast basis
Day 07 JOHANNESBURG
Enjoy a buffet breakfast at the hotel. Meet in the lobby of the hotel for transfer to Pretoria’s Union Building where you will participate in the Women’s Day Celebration.
Today join your fellow women in the Women’s Day Celebrations. Women’s Day is a national holiday. Various events – from working seminars to celebrations of all kinds – serve to affirm the contributions that women to the “New South Africa”. You will have an opportunity to take an active role in the Women’s Day activities.
Later this afternoon you will return to the hotel, where the rest of the afternoon as yours at leisure for shopping.
This evening please meet in the lobby of the hotel for transfer to the Melrose Arch Shopping Centre forfarewell dinner at Moyo’s Restaurant.
After dinner you will be transferred back to the hotel.
Overnight at the Sandton Sun Hotel on a bed and breakfast basis
Day 08 JOHANNESBURG – ENTABENI PRIVATE GAME RESERVE
Enjoy breakfast at the hotel. Please ensure that check out formalities has been completed, before departing the hotel.
Transfer to Entabeni Private Game Reserve (Place of the Mountain) in the Waterberg area, which is a Malaria free area and its approximately 3 hours drive.
More than a 1000 ha of beautiful scenery and vegetation, comprising bushveld, unspoilt ravines and wooded hillsides that are haven to the Big Five, a large variety of game and wildlife as well as the famous Eugene Maraisii Cycad.
Lakeside Lodge lies between soaring bluffs and peaks, a wonderful place for bird-watching and viewing a rich variety of wildlife. On the banks of the lake luxurious and elegantly furnished en suite bedrooms are linked with thatched walkways to the reception.
On arrival a welcome drink will be served whilst you are assisted with check in formalities and escorted to your rooms.
Enjoy lunch in the restaurant, before meeting later for your first African Safari in the reserve. Your ranger will have a cooler box of drinks for sundowner drinks after the safari, before returning to the lodge.
This evening enjoy dinner in an open air reed boma at the lodge, enjoy the South African BBQ.
Overnight at Entabeni Game Lodge on a fully inclusive basis
Day 09 ENTABENI PRIVATE GAME RESERVE
Early morning wake up calls, followed by tea/coffee in the safari lounge. Morning game drive. Buffet breakfast at the lodge Mid-morning bush walk or visit to a local village
Open-vehicle game drives are not the only way to appreciate the region’s wonders. In the mid-morning, a guided bush walk will provide us with intimate views of nature’s more subtle side.
The knowledge of guides and trackers will lead you on walks through the heart of the bush, revealing a few closely guarded secrets. You will tread past intriguing flora – and spy the smaller, more elusive creatures, such as birds, reptiles, insects, and tiny mammals.
This afternoon a buffet lunch at the lodge.
Afternoon game drive, followed by a surprise bush dinner that bid you farewell to South Africa.
Overnight at Entabeni Game Lodge on a fully inclusive basis
Day 10 ENTABENI GAME RESERVE - JOHANNESBURG
Early morning wake up calls followed by tea/coffee in the safari lounge. Your last safari the reserve is followed by breakfast at the lodge.
Please ensure check out formalities have been completed before meeting in the reception area for transfer to Johannesburg.
On arrival at Johannesburg International Airport, you will be meet and assisted with your luggage and check-in formalities.
We hope you had a wonderful trip and we look forward to welcoming you back to Southern Africa!
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