South Africa multi activity vacation

Planet

Our Ethical South African Cycling Adventure has been carefully designed to minimize environmental impact and maximize benefits to local people in a meaningful way.

All cycling routes on this trip take place on public roads or on specially allocated off-road cycling tracks on private land (for which a maintenance and conservation fee is paid). In keeping with our conservation policy, we do not cycle on land that isn't maintained for cycling or go off tar on land that forms part of national park land.

All the accommodation on this trip is fully accredited by Fair Trade in Tourism South Africa. This international accrediting body requires establishments to go through a rigorous 12-month audit of every aspect of their business cycle, including water and waste management and ethical procurement of supplies. As such, you can be assured that waste and water is managed to the highest international standards and supplies such as food and linen are ethically sourced from local companies.

All waste created during the journey itself (water bottles, food packaging, bicycle tubes and bombs) are all collected in the van and recycled responsibly).

People

We are a small and highly personalised private travel planning company: as such, we never build or conduct the same journey twice. Thus whilst this walking journey comes with an itinerary, this is entirely open to changes. We can include rest days, ethical wildlife encounters, more or less walking, more or less focus on birding, wine tasting, ethical tours of particular areas of interest (architecture, flora, history, public art) and several other modifications. All our journeys are private and built exclusively for you.

We are a registered business but we operate as a not-for-profit: this means that once our overheads have been covered for any given year, 100% of the profits for the company are donated to needy organisations that operate in our area.
We support St. Paul’s Primary School, a school in the Cape Town City Bowl that caters for children who live in some of the poorest districts of the city. The school has a particularly high success rate despite the challenges that many of the children face in their communities. We offer two full scholarships (uniforms and fees) every year to some of the neediest children.

Within St. Pauls there is a division of the Shine Centres – a literacy intervention project located in several schools in Cape Town. They assess all the children in the school each year and conduct specific literacy interventions to fast-track reading ages so that children can re-enter the mainstream classrooms. We donate our time in training teachers and supplying stationary to the project.
Cape Town has a particular problem with homelessness for children and young adults. As such, we support the work of the Haven – a series of night shelters for the homeless and indigent across Cape Town with clothing, food and financial donations.

Coming from a family of dancers, we always pay attention to the needs of Zama Dance School – a grassroots dance school located in one of the most deprived areas of Cape Town. Other journeys we offer visit the school and there is a chance to interact with teachers, the founder and pupils alike.
We support the work of Pack for a Purpose – we encourage our clients to donate some space in their luggage to bring items with them that are needed locally. If the journey is equipment specific (e.g. cycling or hiking) we ask our clients to donate boots or helmets to local development initiatives which Pack for a Purpose redistributes for us.

We make use of small, owner-managed companies such as ourselves for our clients’ needs that are based locally, employ at senior level or are directed/owned by previously disadvantaged individuals (PDIs). We also personally engage with these companies on an annual basis to establish where and how the communities they visit have been supported by their business. Typical examples include:

Hannival’s Tours – Chris Hannival is the owner and director of Hannival’s and is himself a PDI. Chris conducts all our local one-day tours to the Peninsula, Winelands, Overberg and many more. Chris grew up in District Six, the area of Cape Town that was slowly erased from the map by the apartheid-era government.

Ekyamma Tours – Ron Martin owns and manages his own guiding company which focuses on the history of the ‘first people’ of South Africa, the San, KhoiSan and !Kung people.

Camissa Tours – owned and managed by PDIs Khonaye and Samantha, Camissa offers ethical tours of Cape Town’s disadvantaged areas

Coffeebeans Routes – multi-award winning and Fair Trade accredited company offering engaging and perspective-altering tours around Cape Town and Johannesburg

Uthando SA – umbrella organisation that creates visiting opportunities to grassroots organisations in some of Cape Town’s most deprived areas.

Around About Cars – small and independent car rental company with a nationwide reach. Owner-managed with a PDI (previously disadvantaged individual) director and an all-PDI staff.

Parker Cottage, Oude Werf, Vineyard Hotel and many others – we try to only use accommodation suppliers who are fully accredited by Fair Trade in Tourism South Africa. We aim to use a minimum of 50% FTT accommodation suppliers and 50% of PDI businesses

Fyndraai Restaurant, Solms Delta and many others – we try to only use dining venues who pay their staff living wages (over and above tips) and make a special effort to source their food supplies from local, sustainable farms and small-scale suppliers.