20th March – Mid April 2005.
Well things here have been busy as hell, been running around all the local important tourist businesses - hostels, wineries, hotels, adventure shops and restaurants distributing my lovely new flyers and presenting them in individualised Perspex holders that fit very nicely on reception desks. Have had many enquiry calls, with afew turning into business, so fingers crossed that theres more.
Business, starts slow and then goes crazy :-))
Didn’t have that many shark transfers during late March, as it appears that the shark diving was going thro a very slow period (for 2 weeks). As well as Hermanus Backpackers being quite empty too.
Then in early April we had a mad flurry of business, so it appears that tourists turn up at all different times of the year. And things can only get better as the May to August season has by far the best visibility for sharks (up to 25 metres of clear water) and of course the whales will be returning then too (June to Dec) to frolic, mate and give birth in Walker Bay. As well as a number of international wildlife documentary companies are booked with some of the shark operators here. So Percy Tours hopes to be transferring them around for their whole time here.
Late News Flash.
We might have a 5 day Movie Film team to transport about at the end of May. 4 famous actors from the UK and an entourage of 35. Not confirmed yet but that will be marvellous if that it comes off.
Hyped rubbish??!!
One bit of worldwide news has been that a guy from Cumbria in UK (Mark Currie) who went on a shark dive afew weeks ago (we are not too sure with which company in Gansbaai yet) has been selling his story of his dive to the worlds press (very probably a huge sensationalised story), but he claims that when he was in the cage a 6 metre shark attacked the cage by biting into it and destroying one of the floatation buoys, then it came back to take another huge bite out of the same side of the steel cage, (yeah right of course it did mate - NOT!!!) then attempted to jump into the top of the cage and tried to attack him from the open top, missing him by cms.
(Utterly laughable!!!)
The boats captain then (it’s claimed) hit the shark repeatedly on the head with a metal bar. The story and some of the early footage is on film and available at the BBC website, but it (very handily) doesn’t show it jumping on top or the captain hitting it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/4382621.stm
Well as you can imagine the other local shark operators have gone absolutely mad over this story, as not only does this go against all the very strict safety practices but the captain of the boat should never have to hit a shark with a metal bar for starters and to allow the shark to jump onto the cage with someone in it is just madness. A shark would have to leave the side of the boat, circle around and come back again & again for each activity that’s been claimed happened. It’s not one single movement.
This gives the worlds press even more ammo to kick this lucrative tourism attraction in the teeth.
Late News Flash.
We found out 2 days ago that the Head of the official Great White Shark Wildlife Protection agency here in Hermanus has gone to the UK to actually start legal proceedings against Mr. Currie. Uuumm very interesting!!! Be that a warning to all you quick buck earning hopefuls.
More when we have it.
Percy Tours Photo Site.
And how’s this for a corking photo sharing website – Flickr – Please check out Percy Tours enters on this site for a great view of what it’s like to be in the very BEST playground on earth –
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51084760@N00/search/tags:percytours/
Well all this comes to you from a very select bunch of news and internet savvy gents.
So if you ever want to know something about anything??
Well sod asking that useless git Jeeves – cos lets be honest he knows sod all about anything really and he takes 6 years to get to the right answer – come ask your friendly Percy search engine – and by god we will give you exactly the answer you want to know. Need to know how many litres of milk a baby whale drinks per day? No!! Well how about – which lucky creature orgasms non-stop for half an hour? Or which mammal has sex non-stop for 24 hours? Or how does an elephant really die and do elephant grave yards actually exist?? Or which creature actually has 2 penises?? Or which creature has the largest sexual organs compared to its body size?
Ask and we will tell you straight.
Or maybe not, as we are too damn busy doing other much more important things :-))))
More Shark Action.
The local shark diving businesses continue to get even more famous people visiting this lovely part of the world – new arrivals recently have been – Colin Farrell, Christopher Lambert, Sting, IT Tycoon Mark Shuttleworth, Stefi Grafi, the lovely Cameron Diaz and her toy-boy Justin Timberlake. While Brad Pitt on his recent visit started property hunting for a mansion, and we found out today, has actually bought a new “hut” on the beach – so I spose Ms. Jolie will be organising the house maids now, seeing as he has stupidly thrown in the towel with Ms. Aniston. I mean which one would you lads rather have curled up with you at night – and the wrong answer is not both of them!!! :-))))
And the heavens opened.
I know what the UKs weather is like – rain, rain and more rain – well get this – last Friday it started to throw it down – and didn’t stop until Monday morning – this was not your usual drizzle but horizontal rain drops the size of ball-bearing. And good god it was relentless. We received over 2 inches (4cms) in this short space of time. The official average rainfall for the whole month of April is 41mm – the local reservoir increased from 45% full to 70% and many roads were closed due to landslides – I went along one of these roads a day later and you should have seen the debris – 100s of rocks the size of cars and trees up rooted everywhere. The huge Hermanus lagoon was so full that the army had to be called in to remove a 50 metre section of Grotto beach so that the overflowing lake could escape into the sea.
This huge storm knocked out the town’s electrics, the phone and internet systems. So I frantically unplug the entire office just in case we get a lightning strike at PT HQ as we could easily lose our whole network and its valuable equipment. Yeah we do have surge protectors but its better to be safe than sorry I say. Thankfully these storms only hit once every 2 or 3 years.
My garden had 2 lakes suddenly appear and I thought that I would have ducks and geese making a home here. The roof just about held up – but at 6am one morning I had to get afew buckets and cooking pots out to catch some drops.
Very welcome surprise.
My fab mates from the UK send me a parcel for my 40th birthday (which was last Nov). I have no idea what it is (which is always the best type of surprise). And upon opening it find an excellent video camera lense, which connects up to my Sony digital camera.
This beauty is a small cylinder with a long lead that can be strapped to a helmet or mounted to a bike frame, a riders arms, legs or any body part, with the Sony video camera being carried in a rucksack, but that’s not all – this fab camera can go under water to depths of 12 feet too – so shark videos will now get a great shoot in the arm and will never look the same. I intend to get a long steel pole to attach it to for some great new shoots.
Check their website for a look – http://www.viosport.com/
And another (nearly) equally welcome surprise was the delivery of 4 huge bags of Twiglets and 2 big pots or UK Marmite – Yummy!!! – Yeah, we do have Marmite over here but it’s not the same.
Corporate Business.
Well it does appear that our Percy Tours flyers are finally doing the trick as we start to get some genuine enquires during the middle of April.
Afew weekends ago we were very busy with a group of 32 clients in 4 minibuses, (plus another tour company had 2 more minibuses of 8 clients each too). They are all on a corporate event from an Asset Management company in Cape Town.
During the morning we zoom them around to do kayaking and sailing, while in the afternoon we have a “treasure hunt” where each group of 8 were given clues to places to discover around Hermanus – 1st stop - a blind fold taste and smell competition at a restaurant. After completing each task correctly they get their next clue to solve.
This was amazing fun and some damn right dirty tricks were played by all sides – from calling other minibuses to say that there were police speed traps around the corner, to completely blocking the other minibuses in at car parks so that their bus could zoom off quicker. One minibus decided to totally cheat at one location by saying that they had completed the task of viewing various famous landmarks without actually seeing them. All our drivers got right into it too – with some hair rising driving – one nutter overtaking a slow moving Police car at about 80kph in a 40kph zone. Lucky he didn’t get a ticket. I came 3rd.
More business in the pipe line.
This week we get a call from the manager at a local retirement village that only opened at Xmas and are literally 300 metres away. They also have a corporate seminar building that regularly has events held there, with 40 bedrooms decked out in a Holiday Inn style. 2 swimming pools, a snooker room, gym, big restaurant and beauty spa.
So I go off for a meeting with them and after a chat they decide they want us to do 2 major jobs for them – 1st is take their residents on weekly tours – these will involve many different activities, from cooking courses, pottery, painting, bird and wildlife viewing, photograph courses, wine and beer tastings, fishing trips, scenic road trips, river boat cruises, golf courses, craft markets, art festivals, tours of the local abalone hatcheries (huge business as the Far East consume tons of the stuff), tours of flower farms (that’s another huge business here, as that’s what you see in your local supermarkets), hikes in the local mountains and nature parks etc. Thankfully all their residents are very sprightly, with the average age being about 55 to 65. This is a retirement village not a frail care home, so absolutely no pushing wheel chairs around for us – phew!!
The 2nd job is to take their corporate clients on much more adventurous pursuits – and there is literally tons to choice from – shark dives, abseiling, mountain biking, canoeing, paragliding, scuba diving, sailing, kayaking, sandboarding, horse riding, quad biking, 4x4 trails, yachting, sky diving, shooting ranges, microlight flights etc.
So there’s loads to be achieved there.
Business trip to Durban.
Every year for 5 days, the city of Durban holds a large conference & trade fair called Indaba, to promote tourism in SA. Well Percy Tours are right up for some of that, so on 6th May we jet off to promote ourselves. There is rumoured to be a 4 fold increase of foreign buyers from Europe, North America and Oz turning up this year.
We are currently printing up Percy Tours t-shirts to parade around in as well as taking the laptop armed with loads of our details to showcase to prospective clients, DVDs, digital camera and as many flyers and business cards as we can carry.
Should be great to met and network with a myriad of new contacts.
Sightings along our shores.
This month there have been a few dolphin sightings and some Bryde Whales around and behind Dyer Island.
Pods of 20 to 30 Humpback Dolphins and 2 to 10 Bottlenose Dolphins have been sighted, with both species being near the surf zone where they hunt small fish.
Afew Southern Right Whales has also been seen but it will be several months before they return in greater numbers. Recent bird sightings have included – Sub-Antarctic Skuas, Sooty Shearwaters, Giant Petrels, Cape Gannets, Oystercatchers and Swift Terns. The African Penguin (Jackass Penguins as they were called until recently) and Swift Terns have taken to their new man-made artificial nests on Dyer Island, with breeding numbers up from last years survey.
Over the last 5 years scientists have also counted over 1000 different individual Great White Sharks. This fantastic animal was recently classified as an endangered species and has therefore put this animal on a NO hunting/fishing list by humans anywhere in the world.
And today’s Shark Divers saw 10 sharks – which is an amazingly high number.
Plus I am not sure if you are aware that the Western Cape has just been elevated to World Heritage status.
While today I had to invest in a big space heater and an extra duvet to wrap around myself. BBBRRRR!!!!!!! Well Antarctica is the closest land mass after all.
Hope you have enjoyed this edition of Percy Tours Updates – more in a month’s time.
Cheers
Percy “Swimming around in so much rain water that its time to invest in some big wellie boots and an 8 mm wetsuit”
www.percytours.com
Designer Tours of Hermanus, Cape Town and the Western Cape region.
Well things here have been busy as hell, been running around all the local important tourist businesses - hostels, wineries, hotels, adventure shops and restaurants distributing my lovely new flyers and presenting them in individualised Perspex holders that fit very nicely on reception desks. Have had many enquiry calls, with afew turning into business, so fingers crossed that theres more.
Business, starts slow and then goes crazy :-))
Didn’t have that many shark transfers during late March, as it appears that the shark diving was going thro a very slow period (for 2 weeks). As well as Hermanus Backpackers being quite empty too.
Then in early April we had a mad flurry of business, so it appears that tourists turn up at all different times of the year. And things can only get better as the May to August season has by far the best visibility for sharks (up to 25 metres of clear water) and of course the whales will be returning then too (June to Dec) to frolic, mate and give birth in Walker Bay. As well as a number of international wildlife documentary companies are booked with some of the shark operators here. So Percy Tours hopes to be transferring them around for their whole time here.
Late News Flash.
We might have a 5 day Movie Film team to transport about at the end of May. 4 famous actors from the UK and an entourage of 35. Not confirmed yet but that will be marvellous if that it comes off.
Hyped rubbish??!!
One bit of worldwide news has been that a guy from Cumbria in UK (Mark Currie) who went on a shark dive afew weeks ago (we are not too sure with which company in Gansbaai yet) has been selling his story of his dive to the worlds press (very probably a huge sensationalised story), but he claims that when he was in the cage a 6 metre shark attacked the cage by biting into it and destroying one of the floatation buoys, then it came back to take another huge bite out of the same side of the steel cage, (yeah right of course it did mate - NOT!!!) then attempted to jump into the top of the cage and tried to attack him from the open top, missing him by cms.
(Utterly laughable!!!)
The boats captain then (it’s claimed) hit the shark repeatedly on the head with a metal bar. The story and some of the early footage is on film and available at the BBC website, but it (very handily) doesn’t show it jumping on top or the captain hitting it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/4382621.stm
Well as you can imagine the other local shark operators have gone absolutely mad over this story, as not only does this go against all the very strict safety practices but the captain of the boat should never have to hit a shark with a metal bar for starters and to allow the shark to jump onto the cage with someone in it is just madness. A shark would have to leave the side of the boat, circle around and come back again & again for each activity that’s been claimed happened. It’s not one single movement.
This gives the worlds press even more ammo to kick this lucrative tourism attraction in the teeth.
Late News Flash.
We found out 2 days ago that the Head of the official Great White Shark Wildlife Protection agency here in Hermanus has gone to the UK to actually start legal proceedings against Mr. Currie. Uuumm very interesting!!! Be that a warning to all you quick buck earning hopefuls.
More when we have it.
Percy Tours Photo Site.
And how’s this for a corking photo sharing website – Flickr – Please check out Percy Tours enters on this site for a great view of what it’s like to be in the very BEST playground on earth –
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51084760@N00/search/tags:percytours/
Well all this comes to you from a very select bunch of news and internet savvy gents.
So if you ever want to know something about anything??
Well sod asking that useless git Jeeves – cos lets be honest he knows sod all about anything really and he takes 6 years to get to the right answer – come ask your friendly Percy search engine – and by god we will give you exactly the answer you want to know. Need to know how many litres of milk a baby whale drinks per day? No!! Well how about – which lucky creature orgasms non-stop for half an hour? Or which mammal has sex non-stop for 24 hours? Or how does an elephant really die and do elephant grave yards actually exist?? Or which creature actually has 2 penises?? Or which creature has the largest sexual organs compared to its body size?
Ask and we will tell you straight.
Or maybe not, as we are too damn busy doing other much more important things :-))))
More Shark Action.
The local shark diving businesses continue to get even more famous people visiting this lovely part of the world – new arrivals recently have been – Colin Farrell, Christopher Lambert, Sting, IT Tycoon Mark Shuttleworth, Stefi Grafi, the lovely Cameron Diaz and her toy-boy Justin Timberlake. While Brad Pitt on his recent visit started property hunting for a mansion, and we found out today, has actually bought a new “hut” on the beach – so I spose Ms. Jolie will be organising the house maids now, seeing as he has stupidly thrown in the towel with Ms. Aniston. I mean which one would you lads rather have curled up with you at night – and the wrong answer is not both of them!!! :-))))
And the heavens opened.
I know what the UKs weather is like – rain, rain and more rain – well get this – last Friday it started to throw it down – and didn’t stop until Monday morning – this was not your usual drizzle but horizontal rain drops the size of ball-bearing. And good god it was relentless. We received over 2 inches (4cms) in this short space of time. The official average rainfall for the whole month of April is 41mm – the local reservoir increased from 45% full to 70% and many roads were closed due to landslides – I went along one of these roads a day later and you should have seen the debris – 100s of rocks the size of cars and trees up rooted everywhere. The huge Hermanus lagoon was so full that the army had to be called in to remove a 50 metre section of Grotto beach so that the overflowing lake could escape into the sea.
This huge storm knocked out the town’s electrics, the phone and internet systems. So I frantically unplug the entire office just in case we get a lightning strike at PT HQ as we could easily lose our whole network and its valuable equipment. Yeah we do have surge protectors but its better to be safe than sorry I say. Thankfully these storms only hit once every 2 or 3 years.
My garden had 2 lakes suddenly appear and I thought that I would have ducks and geese making a home here. The roof just about held up – but at 6am one morning I had to get afew buckets and cooking pots out to catch some drops.
Very welcome surprise.
My fab mates from the UK send me a parcel for my 40th birthday (which was last Nov). I have no idea what it is (which is always the best type of surprise). And upon opening it find an excellent video camera lense, which connects up to my Sony digital camera.
This beauty is a small cylinder with a long lead that can be strapped to a helmet or mounted to a bike frame, a riders arms, legs or any body part, with the Sony video camera being carried in a rucksack, but that’s not all – this fab camera can go under water to depths of 12 feet too – so shark videos will now get a great shoot in the arm and will never look the same. I intend to get a long steel pole to attach it to for some great new shoots.
Check their website for a look – http://www.viosport.com/
And another (nearly) equally welcome surprise was the delivery of 4 huge bags of Twiglets and 2 big pots or UK Marmite – Yummy!!! – Yeah, we do have Marmite over here but it’s not the same.
Corporate Business.
Well it does appear that our Percy Tours flyers are finally doing the trick as we start to get some genuine enquires during the middle of April.
Afew weekends ago we were very busy with a group of 32 clients in 4 minibuses, (plus another tour company had 2 more minibuses of 8 clients each too). They are all on a corporate event from an Asset Management company in Cape Town.
During the morning we zoom them around to do kayaking and sailing, while in the afternoon we have a “treasure hunt” where each group of 8 were given clues to places to discover around Hermanus – 1st stop - a blind fold taste and smell competition at a restaurant. After completing each task correctly they get their next clue to solve.
This was amazing fun and some damn right dirty tricks were played by all sides – from calling other minibuses to say that there were police speed traps around the corner, to completely blocking the other minibuses in at car parks so that their bus could zoom off quicker. One minibus decided to totally cheat at one location by saying that they had completed the task of viewing various famous landmarks without actually seeing them. All our drivers got right into it too – with some hair rising driving – one nutter overtaking a slow moving Police car at about 80kph in a 40kph zone. Lucky he didn’t get a ticket. I came 3rd.
More business in the pipe line.
This week we get a call from the manager at a local retirement village that only opened at Xmas and are literally 300 metres away. They also have a corporate seminar building that regularly has events held there, with 40 bedrooms decked out in a Holiday Inn style. 2 swimming pools, a snooker room, gym, big restaurant and beauty spa.
So I go off for a meeting with them and after a chat they decide they want us to do 2 major jobs for them – 1st is take their residents on weekly tours – these will involve many different activities, from cooking courses, pottery, painting, bird and wildlife viewing, photograph courses, wine and beer tastings, fishing trips, scenic road trips, river boat cruises, golf courses, craft markets, art festivals, tours of the local abalone hatcheries (huge business as the Far East consume tons of the stuff), tours of flower farms (that’s another huge business here, as that’s what you see in your local supermarkets), hikes in the local mountains and nature parks etc. Thankfully all their residents are very sprightly, with the average age being about 55 to 65. This is a retirement village not a frail care home, so absolutely no pushing wheel chairs around for us – phew!!
The 2nd job is to take their corporate clients on much more adventurous pursuits – and there is literally tons to choice from – shark dives, abseiling, mountain biking, canoeing, paragliding, scuba diving, sailing, kayaking, sandboarding, horse riding, quad biking, 4x4 trails, yachting, sky diving, shooting ranges, microlight flights etc.
So there’s loads to be achieved there.
Business trip to Durban.
Every year for 5 days, the city of Durban holds a large conference & trade fair called Indaba, to promote tourism in SA. Well Percy Tours are right up for some of that, so on 6th May we jet off to promote ourselves. There is rumoured to be a 4 fold increase of foreign buyers from Europe, North America and Oz turning up this year.
We are currently printing up Percy Tours t-shirts to parade around in as well as taking the laptop armed with loads of our details to showcase to prospective clients, DVDs, digital camera and as many flyers and business cards as we can carry.
Should be great to met and network with a myriad of new contacts.
Sightings along our shores.
This month there have been a few dolphin sightings and some Bryde Whales around and behind Dyer Island.
Pods of 20 to 30 Humpback Dolphins and 2 to 10 Bottlenose Dolphins have been sighted, with both species being near the surf zone where they hunt small fish.
Afew Southern Right Whales has also been seen but it will be several months before they return in greater numbers. Recent bird sightings have included – Sub-Antarctic Skuas, Sooty Shearwaters, Giant Petrels, Cape Gannets, Oystercatchers and Swift Terns. The African Penguin (Jackass Penguins as they were called until recently) and Swift Terns have taken to their new man-made artificial nests on Dyer Island, with breeding numbers up from last years survey.
Over the last 5 years scientists have also counted over 1000 different individual Great White Sharks. This fantastic animal was recently classified as an endangered species and has therefore put this animal on a NO hunting/fishing list by humans anywhere in the world.
And today’s Shark Divers saw 10 sharks – which is an amazingly high number.
Plus I am not sure if you are aware that the Western Cape has just been elevated to World Heritage status.
While today I had to invest in a big space heater and an extra duvet to wrap around myself. BBBRRRR!!!!!!! Well Antarctica is the closest land mass after all.
Hope you have enjoyed this edition of Percy Tours Updates – more in a month’s time.
Cheers
Percy “Swimming around in so much rain water that its time to invest in some big wellie boots and an 8 mm wetsuit”
www.percytours.com
Designer Tours of Hermanus, Cape Town and the Western Cape region.
