Western Cape Tourism Minister Alan Winde impressed this weekend when his office sent a media release (on a Sunday!) to welcome the Queen Mary 2 and its 2300 passengers to Cape Town. The majestic ship entered the harbour to picture perfect weather yesterday morning, and anchored at Duncan Dock, before leaving for Durban tomorrow, and thereafter to Australia and the Far East.
In its ten years of operation, the visit to Cape Town by the Queen Mary 2 is its fifth. It weighs as much as a 23-storey building, it has 2000 bathrooms, 3000 telephones, 5000 stairs, and its staff and passengers use one million tea bags in a year, the media release informed.
The Minister announced that the city welcomes ‘10000 (cruise) visitors to the province annually‘, which appears on the low side if the Queen Mary 2 alone has one quarter of this visitor number! The cruise liner visits to Cape Town contribute R200 million to our economy every year.
‘We are looking forward to the development of a dedicated cruise-liner terminal at the Port of Cape Town. Transnet accepted bids until the end of October 2013, and have agreed to announce the winning operator by November 2014. That means work on the new terminal could begin before this year is out‘, said Minister Winde.
The Queen Mary 2 is accompanied by two other cruise liners in Cape Town harbour: The Silver Wind and MSC Sinfonia. In March the MSC Sinfonia will dock in Cape Town five times, while the MSC Opera will visit Cape Town on 14 April.
While the weekend work in sending the media release is impressive, the typing errors contained in the release are not something we have ever seen in media releases issued on behalf of Minister Winde, demonstrating a last minute and rushed job!
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www. whale cottage.com Twitter: @WhaleCottage (Photograph by Ruan Buys).
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Awesome! My photo got used in a blog, and I got credited for it! Thanks guys!
Thank you Ruan.
I saw your amazing photograph on Facebook this morning. Thanks for allowing it to be shared.