FOR INTENDING TOURISTS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 7 March 1928, Page 6

FOR INTENDING TOURISTS

Any of the shipping agencies will book you from a. New Zealand port to an Australian, the African entry being mad© at Durban or at Capetown, and it is from this port of entry that you will book your tour. Of course, if you follow the All Blacks there will be little sightseeing, much travelling, and an orgy or Rugby football. So then, if yon are a fan, your route will be mapped out, while the tripper w:ho gets his itinerary plotted in order that he may view' Kaaim.an’s Gat, the Victoria Jj alls, Oudtshorn (home of the ostrich), Ladysmith with its neighbouring battlefields, the wonderful Park at the foot of the Drakensberg Mountains, the spectacular scenery' of Knysna> Forest at- the roots of Outeniqua, anti scores of other beauty spots of rare and weird interest will make his own arrangements. The tourist may book to pass through the lowland of Port Elizabeth only thirteen ■feet above the level of the sea he has just left, and he may go inland to Johannesburg (Jo’burg) John’stown, where the lungs will for a time do extra work to store oxygen from the leas dense atmosphere of an altitude of nearly six thousand feet. ROUTES. If the aforesaid tourist present his shipping ticket at the Durban (Natal) railway station, he will be given concessions enabling him a twentv-one days’ inspection, only four of which will be spent in travelling, the four days’- first class railway fare amounting to £l2 Os 2d. Through Natal, Orange Tree State, Transvaal, Cape Province (right to Capetown) he will have gone, and he will have been comfortably housed and fed. His breakfast, luncheon and dinner (by coupon) will be 8s 6d j»er diem, and his bedding 3s. The dining cars are roomy, full-windowed and ventilated, the “S.A.R.” on each of the beautiful articles of furniture being as proud an emblem as “Entered at Stationers’ Hall.” This, the cheapest trip, begins at an altitude of twenty feet, reaches dive thousand and over, comes to four thousand at Kimberley, and ends at a humble fifteen in good old Capetown nestling under Table Mountain. Should the tripper be energetic and scale the height, he may bring back some of the mouse-ear leaves of a kind of cotton plant which is valued as “Planta fenista,” a sprig of broom to bear unying w'itness of his climb, for the plant hs an. “immortelle.”

The longest of the official itineraries is one of thirty-one days (eleven on the rails) from Durban through Natal, Transvaal, Cape Province (Mafeking), Zimbabwe Ruins in Rhodesia. Orange Free State (Bloemfontein), Mossel Bay, and back to Capetown, all the high altitudes being included in this run. The first class* fare for this eleven days’ tour

TRAVELLING WITH THE ALL BLACKS.

is under £35 sterling, and you are allowed one hundred pounds of luggage free. COMPORT! AND SPEED. There is every comfort on these journeys and little monotony, as new scenes of intense interest continually attract. There are breaks of one to- four .days, and the “All Blacks.” follower may see his representatives in action from time to time without losing opportunities of visiting world-famous scenery and Efcnpire uattle grounds. From Johannesburg, where the mountain climate of country lifted up five thousand seven hundred feet is admirable with air invigorating as the widow’s driest, motor runs can be enjoyed even to as far as the, port ol Portuguese East Africa, Lourenco Marques, with its never-to-be-forgotten cosmopolitan population. The long miles travelled -but add to the strangeness. This tour via Durban to Capetown—4Bßo miles—is four times as long as from Bluff to the Three Kings! IV hat pleasures there will be in the recollection of the Victoria Falls with their frontage of one and a quarter miles, where the crocodile is as common as is the hoppopotamus; of mysterious Zimbabwe, remains of a city of the dim past, teeming with strange monuments of the long-gone past; of Mafeking, depot for Bechuanaland; of the wonderful stalactites and stalagmites of the Congo caves near Oudtshom; qf the gorgeous Garden Route Railway that has taken you to the warm waters of Mossel Bay’s pretty seaside resort; of the steps of the flowery Karroos; of the mineral springs in the district around Ashton in Cape Province, home of the South African vineyard, whence come the wines and the brandy noted even more in fiction than is the grand scenery of the country surrounding its sun-kissed fields of vines. ENTHUSIASM. Eor New Zealanders the occasion of the visit of the All Blacks of 1928 to South Africa football centres is unique. The union- will be en fete and tourists from this Dominion will surely be among the most cordialily welcomed of the many who will make the year historic for the union of South Africa. The presence in their midst of our Rugby players is regarded of so great an importance to this progressive and determined people that the flag controversy will be overshadowed and the heart of the union will go out to everyone even remotedly connected with a Dominion which has come to struggle with their mighty men of valour for the Rugby supremacy of the British Empire. And the contestants are worthy of the occasion and of the prize. (To be continued on Wednesdays and Saturdays until eve o.f departure of the 1 All Blacks.)