South Africa has been awarded 44 Blue Flag status sites for 2017 – down 14 from the previous year.

Blue Flag is an international annual award which focuses on the environmental management of our coastline and coastal waters to help tourism growth and development.

Although it’s a voluntary eco-label, it’s become an international symbol of quality for beaches, boats and marinas that meet a standard of excellence in the areas of safety, amenities, cleanliness, environmental information and environmental management.

Speaking at an announcement ceremony on Wednesday, Minister of Tourism, Tokozile Xasa applauded the 44 beaches that have obtained full Blue Flag status along with 11 sustainable boats and seven marinas.

“We are re-awarding Blue Flag status to some of the beaches that lost their blue flag status in the 2016/17 season.  I would like to attribute this achievement to the Department’s Blue Flag Beach Steward project which place young people on these beaches to maintain their Blue Flag standards,” said Xasa.

“The coastal and marine tourism sector will contribute about R21.4 billion to the GDP and create about 116,000 direct jobs by 2026, thus reducing poverty, inequality and unemployment, while contributing to sustainable livelihoods and development.

These estimates are conservative as they are growing from a low 2015 base of R11.9 billion direct contribution to GDP and 64,400 direct jobs.”

28 beaches were awarded the title in the Western Cape‚ followed by nine in KwaZulu-Natal and seven in the Eastern Cape. A further 22 beaches were named as “pilot sites”, indicating that they were currently working towards full accreditation.

Only Humewood Beach in Port Elizabeth and Grotto Beach in Hermanus have retained a place on the list since it first started in 2000.

Blue Flag Beaches in South Africa

Beach	Region	Municipality
Marina	KwaZulu-Natal	Ray Nkonyeni
Trafalgar	KwaZulu-Natal	Ray Nkonyeni
Lucien	KwaZulu-Natal	Ray Nkonyeni
Southport	KwaZulu-Natal	Ray Nkonyeni
Umzumbe	KwaZulu-Natal	Ray Nkonyeni
Ramsgate	KwaZulu-Natal	Ray Nkonyeni
Hibberdene	KwaZulu-Natal	Ray Nkonyeni
Westbrook	KwaZulu-Natal	Ethekwini
Ushaka	KwaZulu-Natal	Ethekwini

CHARACTER: The quaint village of Menton

Bathed in unique light, the sea lapping this 160km stretch of pristine French coast is so blue it appears to be competing with the sky.

And with five-star hotels, a sophisticated beach scene and glitzy nightlife, its elegant resorts make the ideal retreat for artists, actors and the achingly rich.

This summer it became the sun-drenched backdrop for Riviera, Sky Atlantic’s mesmerising ten-part thriller. Starring Julia Stiles and Adrian Lester, the drama tells the story of the excesses of this playground of the wealthy, putting the loaded Clios family at the centre of a gritty tale of money laundering, murder and deception.

The beautifully shot series ensured that the cash that is flashed around the stylish shores of St Tropez, Cannes, Antibes, Nice and Monaco practically drips off the screen. And on first arriving in Nice, where most of the action takes place, it was obvious that the show did not exaggerate.

SHOPPING: Fruit and vegetable market in Cours Saleya, Nice

The beach promenade is spotless, the designer shops are everywhere and the clientele breezing in and out of swanky hotels look like the expensively dressed extras in the show.

Queen Victoria, the original Nice tourist, put it on the map as the ideal retreat to escape cold British winters.

In fact, the monarch loved it so much she commented on her death bed: “Oh, if only I were at Nice, I should recover.”

I begin with a stroll on the car-free Promenade du Paillon, which splits the old town from the new and features play parks, seating areas and water fountains.

MAJESTIC: Pristine French coast offers sparkling blue seas

The paths take the shape of the river which has now been filled in after it kept flooding the bus terminal that ran alongside.

Re-opened in 2013, it’s now an oasis of green open space. My walk takes me to the Place Massena, which is dominated by an impressive statue of the Greek god Apollo – an artwork with a chequered past.

The original statue put up in the 50s was moved in 1979 to a less conspicuous spot in north Nice as he was deemed too well-endowed. But 15 years later, when they put in the tramway, Apollo was returned to his base, albeit with a more family-friendly silhouette.

Between the squares of Massena and Garibaldi, I sample my first Corsican and Nice specialties at Gaglio, a beautiful Parisian-style brasserie.

OLD TOWN: Nice’s famous street market

I recommend the melt-in-yourmouth gnocchi, accompanied by a crisp French rosé wine – the drink of choice in these parts. My tour of the Nice seen in Riviera continues with a stroll along the seafront on Promenade des Anglais to Baie des Anges.

I then make the long climb up Castle Hill which, until the Middle Ages when the Old Town became the centre of Nice, was the heart of the city.

LUXURY: The Harbour in St. Tropez

Now a place of solitude and shade, each level has sweeping views of the city. I spend the next morning browsing Nice’s famous street market, on the Cours Saleya, which sells flowers, fruit, vegetables and handmade organic soaps.

I sample the street food socca – a chickpea and olive oil pancake, sprinkled with pepper, along with an onion tart called pissaladiere, a pizza–type dough topped with caramelised onions and olives.

The market is in Vieux Nice, or the Old Town, one of the liveliest areas in the city.

Dating back to the 1700s, colourful apartments with wooden shutters line the warren of narrow streets.

Riviera is also shot in Antibes, south west of Nice, and the drive along the mountain roads which hug the coastline gives another tantalising taste of the life of the super-rich.

On the Cap de Antibes, mansions sell for £50-60million and billionaire Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich owns four.

The Hotel Belles Rives, which sits in a charming cove on the Cap, was converted from a villa into an elegant hotel in 1929 by Boma Estène and is now run by his grand-daughter Marianne and her son Antoine.

The stunning lobby and terrace feature in Riviera and its elegant cocktail and champagne menu provides the perfect excuse to sit and take in the setting, while raising a glass to former guests including F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The hotel also hosts music events on the beach. And if you stay long enough you could take a waterskiing lesson with the charismatic Marco who’s been part of the hotel family since the Eighties.

If you can’t stretch to more than a cocktail at the Belles Rives, accommodation back in Nice is more affordable and I opt for jazz-inspired Hotel Ellington, a comfortable and friendly abode ten minutes from the beach.

I spend my final day touring the Corniche Roads, three famous mountainside driving routes with breathtaking views from Nice to Menton, a relatively sleepy town.

I hike up zig-zag steps, through jumbled alleyways and past the baroque church with its landmark bell tower.

From the top I savour the tantalising curves of this gilt-edged coastline and am again dazzled by the exceptional blue of the glittering Med.

A little Dutch courage could be the key to helping travellers speak the local lingo, according to new research.

A study published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology exploring the “popular belief that alcohol improves the ability to speak in a foreign language” found that booze has a positive impact on people’s grasp of foreign pronunciation.
Researchers used 50 native German speakers who recently learned Dutch, providing some with a “low dose of alcohol” matched to their weight and others with an alcohol-free control drink. Each then took part in a casual two-minute discussion in Dutch with observers who rated their language skills. The participants were also asked to rate their own linguistics.


The scientists found that those who had consumed alcohol were handed “significantly” better ratings from the observers compared with those who did not. “However, alcohol has no effect on self-ratings,” the report found.

The evidence showed that despite pronunciation improving, grammar, vocabulary and argumentation were similar between both groups.

The researchers, who came from the University of Liverpool, Maastricht University and King’s College London, said more studies were needed to identify the exact effects alcohol has on speaking foreign languages.

“We need to be cautious about the implication of these results until we know more about what causes the observed results,” they wrote. “One possible mechanism could be anxiety-reducing effect of alcohol.”

A 1972 study along a similar theme found that low doses of alcohol improved American’s pronunciation of Thai words. The authors found that it was possible the drink could reduce “language anxiety”.

Transport Canada is planning to stop evaluating pilots who perform checks on their counterparts at the country’s largest airlines and will instead give the responsibility to the operators, a change critics say erodes oversight and public safety.

Documents show Transport Canada made the decision in May when the House of Commons transport committee was reviewing aviation safety and subsequently recommended more on-site inspections generally of the airline industry instead of paper audits.

A risk assessment document and an internal letter from Transport Canada’s director of national operations for civil aviation were obtained under an access to information request by the Canadian Federal Pilots Association, the bargaining agent for about 450 pilots, most of whom work for the federal government.

Transport Canada’s evaluators test so-called check pilots for the large airlines, who in turn evaluate the pilots in their own organizations.

The letter says the changes will take place April 1 for airlines with planes that fly more than 50 passengers.


The accompanying risk assessment acknowledges Canada is moving away from the mainstream practices used in other countries.

“It could be argued that Canada’s experience and relative maturity with systems-based surveillance will adequately complement this shift of responsibilities … and therefore mitigate any concerns other states or trade associations may have with response to such a departure from globally accepted practices,” the risk-assessment document says.

Canada is one of over 190 members of the International Civil Aviation Organization and has agreed to follow its recommended practices, including evaluating pilots twice a year.

Greg McConnell, chairman of the pilots association, said the changes are pushing Canada’s aviation safety system onto the industry itself.

“I think it’s very, very important that people understand we are getting closer to self-regulation all the time.” he said in an interview. “It’s just more cutting, more dismantling of the safety net.”

The risk assessment says Transport Canada is having a problem hiring and retaining properly qualified inspectors. A spokesman with the pilots association said none of its inspectors will likely lose their job because of the changes.

The documents say transferring the responsibility is a “low risk.”

Transport Minister Marc Garneau and officials in his department weren’t available for an interview. The department says in an email it is focusing its oversight on areas of greater risk.

“Data has demonstrated that over the past five years, approved check pilots have had a very low failure rate (less than 0.2 per cent) when being monitored by Transport Canada. The department is confident that approved check pilots are exercising their delegation of authority properly,” it says.

Conservative MP Kelly Block, a vice-chair on the Commons transport committee, said she’s concerned the changes weren’t brought to the committee during its study on aviation safety.

“When a parliamentary committee is seized with a topic and the department doesn’t disclose this kind of relevant information … I think that’s very disturbing.”

The committee recommended the government establish targets for more on-site safety inspections as opposed to auditing the safety management systems of the airlines. Transport Canada replied to the suggestion earlier this month, saying it recognizes the importance of a mix of systems-based inspections and spot checks.

New Democrat MP Robert Aubin, the committee’s other vice-chair, said the decision was “curious” because Transport Canada said it was doing more oversight, not less.

“I have concerns if the pilots who evaluate their pilots are not evaluated by Transport Canada. We have to have the same standards,” he said in an interview. “We have to increase the resources at Transport Canada to make sure we can do that job.”

Liberal MP Judy Sgro, the committee’s chairwoman, was not available for an interview.

The documents say putting additional inspection burdens on the airlines means extra human and financial tolls on them.

Block said the committee heard airlines already operate on tight financial margins and she believes they are just as concerned about safety.

“That’s what you’re left with, is believing that perhaps that (consumer) costs will have to go up in order to ensure that they are operating in a safe environment.”

WestJet and Air Canada declined comment on the pending changes.

We had heard that, weather-permitting, the sunrise view from Thani Mai (our sunset spot from yesterday) is well worth a 5.30am alarm clock.  Walking through town before dawn we passed shopkeepers opening their shutters and locals passing the temple and ringing a bell for good fortune before heading up the same steep steps that we had climbed less than twelve hours before.  Unlike the sunset, barely anybody was around for the sunrise, which we were able to watch from a little shelter on the hill side.  Alas, the Himalaya were still shrouded in mist (a disappointment as we weren’t able to see them from Bandipur at all), but the views were still beautiful and it was worth us getting up.
After one last tranquil breakfast on the hotel patio, we packed our things and said our farewells – having signed the guestbook the manager gave us both a small scarf and smeared a red dye dot onto our foreheads, which is a traditional good luck and bon voyage custom.  In order to continue to keep the itinerary packed I had arranged for another driver to pick us up and take us to Pokhara, the next town – at a mere £35 for the two hour journey, it seemed far better than faffing around with the intermittent bus service.  The scenery en-route was much the same as we had seen from Kathmandu, as we followed the country’s main arterial road along a steep-sided gorge.

Waking up feeling relatively refreshed, we planned our day over a breakfast of eggs, cereal and fresh fruit on the hotel patio.  Staying in Bandipur is more about the general ambiance than visiting any specific sights and with some fairly hefty hiking ahead in the upcoming week, we decided to undertake a half-day acclimatisation hike to a nearby village – which would get us used to the climate of the country and what we could expect in terms of provisions en-route and the quality of trails etc.
We settled on the nearby village of Ramkot as a suitable destination – a two hour hike away along the ridge of mountains it shares with Bandipur.  Despite its proximity to relatively well known Bandipur, Ramkot has yet to develop anything in terms of tourist infrastructure, with Lonely Planet advising that visitors would need to bring their own lunch.


After a relatively steep initial climb the trail levelled out and we passed through terraced farms and forested slopes – with the occasional family of monkeys swinging through the trees above our heads.  The temperature wasn’t too bad for hiking (in the mid to high 20s) but with the two of us being thoroughly acclimatised to the bleak British autumn, it was well worth us getting used to the warmth and humidity early.  We had the path to ourselves almost entirely, with only a few yak herders passing us by.  Sophie’s family better put their drinks down before they read this, but as we skirted around a small pool she also saw a snake – so that was a bit of excitement.
As the village is in no way geared up to tourists, we were able to gain a snapshot of Nepalese rural life, with every house looking after animals ranging from chickens to goats to pigs and many of them with bee hives or drying sweetcorn outside.  Ramkot’s claim to fame is in its unique round houses, though strangely there only appeared to be one that we could spot – in Nepal it seems that after the earthquake you can never be sure what is and isn’t where it should be.

On our way into the town we had noticed signposts for a hotel and, having only packed a basic lunch we decided to see what was on offer.  Interestingly the hotel, which must have been brand new, consisted of a clearing with maybe three rooms in a single storey building, a kitchen and a seating area – all run by three teenage boys.  Having perched ourselves on a bench, one of the boys came to give us a menu of soup or noodles – and after choosing the latter we were treated to a bowl each of super noodles.

The journey back to Bandipur seemed to pass far quicker and with time to spare we decided to climb Thani Mai, a temple on the hill that dominates the town and which is supposed to be one of the best 360 degree panoramas in the country.  After a bit of a slog up the hill, along which we were asked to pose with several groups of teenagers, we arrived just in time for sunset alongside throngs of locals and tourists.  Unfortunately we have yet to see the Himalaya themselves due to a pervading haze, but the view over the surrounding terraces, hills and the town itself were worth the climb.  Amusingly a group of four kids attached themselves to myself and Sophie – wanting to play with our phones and cameras at first before sprinkling us with flower petals they had picked from somewhere.

We decided to eat at the hotel restaurant again in the evening (we had read that it is supposed to be the best in the town) and this time treated ourselves to the Nepali set dinner – fried chicken and chips for a starter (!?), soup, curry and dahl with a yoghurt and nut dessert.  After dinner we went for a last wander around the town which was very busy with locals enjoying what appeared to be some kind of festival.  A live band (who were surprisingly excellent) was playing in the square and when they swapped from local favourites to western covers we were literally dragged to dance.  As we made our onto the dance floor the lead singer told the crowd that we weren’t just tourists, we were guests – and this acknowledgement that we were guests at an entirely Nepalese local festival perhaps summed up better than anything else how well Bandipur has balanced the lure of tourist income with the requirement to not lose the town’s essential character.

Our two week trip to Nepal was never going to be getting off to the most comfortable of starts. With no direct flights linking the country to the UK, we were forced to fly 7 hours to New Delhi and wait 9 hours before jumping on a 90 minute flight to Kathmandu.  Fortunately, Air India proved to be an excellent airline – but unfortunately, despite purchasing the right to sit in a first class lounge, 9 hours overnight in an airport lounge is what I imagine purgatory to be like.  Our lounge rights did allow us access to an open buffet and free beers, but our exhaustion and general lack of orientation meant that it was still unpleasant – as best summed up towards the end of the ordeal when Sophie exclaimed “I’ll just finish my beer and go get my breakfast”.
Over 24 hours after we have last slept, we were finally out of the airport and on our way.  With a packed itinerary, I had decided that we would leave Kathmandu until last and had therefore arranged for a driver to pick us up and head towards the west of the country where we would be spending the first half of the trip.  My original intention had been to stop along the way at the town of Gorkha, the former centre of a powerful regional empire whose soldiers the British famously faced and absorbed into the army.  I had not anticipated that the main highway in Nepal was a single-lane pot-hole ridden affair which required several sections of off-roading where repairs were taking place and as a result it soon became clear that we would need the full day to get to our first destination, Bandipur, and that we would have to jettison the Gorkha detour.

The hill town of Bandipur is in an area of Nepal dominated by the Newari, an ethnic minority with their own distinct culture, language and architecture and the town is supposedly one of the best places in the country to experience this.  Somehow surviving the earthquake relatively unscathed, Bandipur has built up a reputation as a slightly off the beaten track haven for backpackers of all ages to partake in gentle day hikes and sip coffee on terraces overlooking the surrounding hills with the snow-capped Himalaya looming in the distance.

It took us about five hours to drive from Kathmandu Airport to Bandipur, meaning that by the time we checked in at our hotel we had been travelling for over 30 hours.  The Guan Ghar Hotel where we were staying was the perfect tonic to this – a beautifully restored Newari house set around a courtyard with a fountain and with views from the breakfast terrace over the surrounding villages.  As tends to be the case with supremely long days, we had got a bit of a second wind, so after dropping our bags off we went for a wander around the village.

The success of Bandipur has been down to the careful management of a local development committee who, appreciating the town’s potential, managed to balance the arrival of tourists with retaining the town’s culture.  Tourists haven’t arrived in droves (we saw a handful of couples, a few groups of German hikers and a Chinese minibus) but have brought enough money to allow the local community to restore many of the old buildings and lay new footpaths and roads.  It was clear as we walked around the village that whilst things appeared far more pristine than you would normally find in an isolated hill community, it was very much still a local town with a few foreign visitors, rather than a traveller ghetto.

We headed to the north of the town to the local parade ground where once upon a time the British would inspect their Gorkha regiments.  Now the flat expanse with tremendous views is popular with couples at sunset – and despite it being too hazy to see the mighty Himalaya, we were able to watch the surrounding terraced hills turn orange through grey before walking back into town for a pint of “Gorkha” beer (“only for the brave”) and a dinner of local food at our hotel – “momo” dumplings, thyme soup and fried banana.  With that, after nearly a day and a half without a bed, we clambered up to our room for the deepest of sleeps.