Every year Infinity Holidays sends about 120 groups away on educational and incentive trips but the Incrowd is the mother of them all, this is THE trip to get on.
Late last year, 50 of Infinity’s top selling retail agents made their way from all over the country to Johannesburg. What followed was an indulgent, once in a lifetime experience where the participants enjoyed luxury accommodation, gourmet food, close encounters of the animal kind and adrenaline pumping adventure.
The first night of the trip was spent in Johannesburg at the 5-star Da Vinci Hotel & Suites and the participants wandered around with glasses brimming with champagne as they were wowed by the ‘beautiful spacious and modern rooms’. Then it was dinner time and a taste of what will be on offer at next year’s Incrowd, which will be hosted in the Greek Islands.
The venue was Pappas on the Square, a Greek restaurant where drink flowed, endless food was sampled, Greek dancing was attempted and plates were smashed!
The first adventure for the group was a trip to Kruger National Park by private aircraft where they spent two nights at the jaw dropping Sabi Sabi Private Game Bush Lodge.
Once again the first hour or so was spent, champagne in hand checking out this beautiful lodge. Then it was into jeeps and off on safari in search of the ‘big five’. Kruger is lush and green at this time of year which surprised a lot of the group and they wondered how an animal the size of an elephant could get around in the thick scrub, but soon enough the participants were face to face with elephants, lions and rhinos. Dinner that night was under the stars with food of superb quality and variety including a selection of antelope and impala.
Over the period of 48 hours that the group spent at Sabi Sabi they ticked off the ‘big five’ as well as numerous other animals and were treated to ‘at least five meals a day of the highest quality’. At the end of the day it was Amarula in the private bar and more animal watching from the rooms private balconies that overlooked waterholes.
According to Bianca Schembri one of the Infinity hosts, ‘Leaving Sabi Sabi was hard! We all knew we were leaving somewhere really special and there were lots of vows to return. My biggest tip after visiting a private game lodge is that it is well worth the money to ensure this once in a lifetime experience is as special as it can be.”
Capetown was the next destination on the list and our group stayed at another 5-star hotel the very grand Cape Royale Luxury Hotel & Spa! The first night was a complete departure from the game lodge as the group partied hard at ‘Beefcakes’, Cape Town’s most famous transvestite club…needless to say there was much hilarity, comparisons of ticks found in unusual places and of course twirking!
The next day a tour of ‘eerie’ Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated was followed by the complete opposite of incarceration…a beach party at ‘Shimmy Beach Club’ where the group donned bikinis and board-shorts and imbibed cocktails while watching the spectacular sunset over water with the beautiful table-lands behind them.
The next few days were devoted to ‘choose your own adventure’, where the group split up and indulged themselves with a cornucopia of adventures from diving with seals to cheetah encounters, winery tours, abseiling and great white shark encounters. Not surprisingly at day’s end there were huge weary smiles and much story telling over a few sundowners.
No trip to South Africa is complete without a visit to the wine country and the group was treated to a couple of days at, you guessed it, another luxurious 5-star hotel ‘La Residence’ in Franschhoek. The final two days were occupied with tours of the winelands complete with luscious lunches, dinners and of course copious amounts of wonderful wine.
The very last experience for the group was a sunset cruise with champagne as the participants said goodbye to new friends and old and made their way back to their various home ports, where they are no doubt already planning their assault on the Greek Islands next year!