HIDDEN TREASURE

Portuguese speaking tour operator based in White River near Nelspruit

Explore Mpumalanga and across the border to Mozambique

Tour packages with a difference – “Braille Trail”, Floral KingdomTours ” and “Genesis of Life Tours”

‘THERE is so much more to the Lowveld than just the Kruger National Park,” Sertorio Mtshothola shakes his head as he manoeuvres his Mercedes-Benz 16-seater into a parking bay at the Lowveld Botanical Garden. “You’re about to see what I mean. Sure, Kruger is an incredible place but there are amazing things to see and do just outside Kruger yet overseas visitors just think the Lowveld is all about the park.”

Sertorio is the owner of Ntwanano Tours and Travel, a business he started in White River, just outside Nelspruit. Sertorio was born in Sophiatown, a “black spot” near the centre of Johannesburg which the apartheid government began forcibly dismantling the year before he was born. (Sertorio explains that he derives his Greek first name from the fact that his father worked for a Greek family in Johannesburg where “he was practically part of the family”.)

In the mid-1960s the family moved to Soweto where Sertorio grew up – until 1976 when the township erupted and Sertorio started out on a worldwide quest to finish his education, a quest that took him to most southern African countries and most importantly, Mozambique where he met his wife and lived for many years, Britain and the United States. In the mid-1970s Sertorio (who speaks Portuguese and is a native Tsonga-speaker) was recruited to teach English as a second language in Mozambique.

His formal studies ended with a Fullbright scholarship to read for a masters in international studies in California. After 22 years “in the classroom”, Sertorio needed a change of scenery. So it was that he wound up in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga, consulting to government and non-governmental bodies on strategic planning. But Sertorio had a dream that involved neither teaching nor consulting. “Consulting gave me the break I needed but it wasn’t what I wanted to do forever. What I really wanted was to run my own business while getting out there in nature.”

The realisation of his dream was Ntwanano Tours and Travel, a business that offers transfers across Mpumalanga (and further afield) and tours that include the Kruger National Park and the wonders of God’s Window, the Blyde River Canyon and the Sudwala Caves but that also take in Swaziland and Mozambique, a specialty of Ntwanano.

The company has a full-time staff of four: two drivers, Sertorio and his wife Marlene. It has four vehicles and deploys a highly-skilled, select pool of tour guides according to client requirements. Sertorio is careful to match guiding expertise to what clients hope to see and experience. Thanks to the local TEP cluster, he has formed a strategic alliance with William Hlatshwayo of Crowned Eagle Tours in Hazyview, a wildlife and birding expert second to none.

Sertorio’s own particular interest is the floral kingdom of Mpumalanga. It’s for this reason that he recently announced the launch of a “floral kingdom package”, tours taking in the remarkable botanical diversity of this lush province, tours that can last from one day to seven). The flora kingdom tours include visits to game parks and specialist organic growers of herbs and plants – plus the Lowveld Botanical Garden with its famous collection of cycads and its elevated walkways through an African forest. “Here in the Lowveld you will find a diversity of plants you won’t find anywhere else in South Africa, all in one place,” comments Sertorio. “People are missing out if they come to the Lowveld and don’t experience our floral kingdom.”

Another tour which Ntwanano recently launched is the “Genesis of life” tour. “We are very near the place where life began. We take you to the Barberton mountains and we take you right back in time, to the earliest days of the earth. And we take you to some of the oldest gold mines in the world.” Ntwanano has also launched special packages for blind and partially-sighted tourists.

Mpumalanga, clearly, is a special place – but what makes Ntwanano special? Says Sertorio: “At Ntwanano we understand that if people are to have a special experience they need to be with people who are passionate about their jobs. Everyone who represents us is passionate, as passionate as I am.”

When he started the business, admits, Sertorio, he had little more than passion – and a bit of knowledge. “But TEP started introducing me to the right people and the training I needed to run this business. They’ve given me confidence in my activities as a tour guide. They’re helping me spread the message around the world that Mpumalanga has much more to offer than Kruger.”

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New Tourist Products in Mpumalanga Province

Ultimate Touch, Feel & Smell Tour Packages
By Bridget Hilton-Barber (083) 309 1837

Introduction: From the beloved Kruger National Park to the historic Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens in Cape Town, there a variety of Braille trails in South African where visually-impaired and unsighted people can engage with the wonders of nature in a
sensory and sensual way.

The area around Berg-en-Dal camp in the southern Kruger National Park (KNP) supports one of the greatest floral diversities in the park. This is because of the high rainfall and geological habitat, and here there are trees that occur nowhere else. The touch and feel Braille Trail with guide ropes and Braille signboards goes around the edges of Berg-en-Dal, and unsighted visitors can enjoy this unique floral diversity. As part of their Botanical Bliss tour, Ntwanano Tours & Travel offers customised tours to the Braille Trail at Bergen-Dal, and an indigenous muti or medicinal garden at Skukuza camp, also in the southern parts of the park, as well as a variety of nurseries on the outskirts of the KNP.

In the Karoo National Park in the Eastern Cape, there is a 400-metre long Fossil Braille Trail that is designed to take visitors back in time some 225 million years to when the first complex ecosystems occurred on land. This was the Late Permian Period, long before the dinosaurs, when herbivores, lizard-like insect-eaters and sabre-toothed superpredators roamed the Great Karoo.

There is a Braille Trail at Mossel Bay Botanical Garden in Mossel Bay, a coastal town along the Cape Garden Route. Here unsighted people can immerse themselves in the world of plants – particularly fynbos - used for centuries by the San, Khoi, Coloured, Xhosa and European people for shelter, food and medicinal uses as well as for magical, ritual and religious purposes.

Kirstenbosch’s Braille Trail is one of the country’s most popular, and also features a fragrance garden where visitors can touch, feel and smell. Established in 1895, Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden is the oldest and largest in South Africa and one of the
Seven Magnificent Gardens of the World.

Contact Sertorio on 082 970 9188 re: Ntwanano Tours to Berg en Dal.

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Tourism Week -  13.10.2009. By Martin Hatchuel – BarefootWriter

New Tourism Initiative In Mpumalanga Caters For The Blind, For Geo-Enthusiasts And For Lovers Of South Africa’s Flora.  

Either I’m a racist, or the thorny question of ‘development’ has become so fraught with pictures of arts and crafts collectives that my addled brain can’t get past them.

But either way, Houston - we have a problem.

See, I was walking the halls of the DEC at Indaba earlier this year when a tall and friendly black man saw my media lanyard and stopped me. He wanted to give me his brochure and my immediate thought was (forgive me), “Oh god. Another development project.”

Never judge a book by it’s brochure.

Sertorio Mshothola is the Director of Ntwanano Tours & Travel, an Mpumalanga-based business that aims to “provide a high quality service, using our skills and knowledge of the market and the region to satisfy the needs of the clients at very competitive rates,” under the motto “Turning Your Dreams into Reality.”

Their products are anything but ordinary: The Genesis of Life Tour, The Braille Walk and The Flora Kingdom Tour were designed by Mr. Mshothola himself, who told me that, “I realised over the years that when anyone thinks about Mpumalanga, they only think about the animals, God’s Window, and the like.”

But, he said, there is a diversity of plants in the Province, and so he’d decided to use the Indaba to launch a tour of Mpumalanga’s Floral Kingdom.

He’d also come up with ideas for a specialised blind people’s tour - which includes Braille Trails (you can read his article on Braille Trails here) and a touch-and-feel interaction with elephants - and the Genesis of Life tour, which includes visits to areas where the earliest traces of life on earth have been found, where the oldest gold was mined, and where ancient fossils can be seen.

The Flora Kingdom Tour includes the world renowned Lowveld Botanical Gardens, a Cycad Forest, a fever tree cluster, a herb farm, and other exotic, plant-related destinations “to learn about and discuss the exquisite flora and rare plants of Mpumalanga and their uses in medicine, food, drinks and cosmetics.”

Ntwanano Tours is one of the preferred service providers for the Tourism Cluster Project in Mpumalanga - an initiative of the Tourism Enterprise Partnership.

Now then - where’s the ‘development’ in that? To me, Ntwananao Tours is business pure and simple; business that’s gone way past the paternalistic moniker of ‘development,’ and business the way the tourism industry should do it.

Watch my video interview with Mr. Mshothola here.

Sertorio M Mshothola, Director, Ntwanano Tours & Travel; sertorio@ntwananotours.co.za
www.ntwananotours.co.za

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New tourism initiative in Mpumalanga caters for the blind, the Geo-enthusiasts and Flora lovers.

Mpumalanga – the place where the sun rises – captures the world’s vision of Africa and the images of this wonderland of fauna and flora will from now on also host blind visitors and people interested in the geological wonders of the area in well organized guided tours. Only the most experienced tour guides will accompany visitors on these tours.

These initiatives described as the The Genesis of Life Tour, The Braille Walk and The Flora Kingdom Tour is the brainchild of a BEE tour operator based in Nelspruit, capitol city of Mpumalanga.

Sertorio Mndau Mshothola, owner of Ntwanano Tours is positive that these initiatives will open new doors for tourism and visitors to the area as the three themes of his tours encompass some of the more relevant new trends tourism.

The Genesis of Life tour will include visits to areas where traces of the first life on earth, the oldest gold on earth as well as ancient fossils can be seen – and touched – in the Mkonjwa Mountains The tours will also include visits to old and operational mines as well as gold panning and story-telling and live performances around a campfire. The Flora Kingdom Tour will include - amongst other destinations – the world renowned Lowveld Botanical Gardens, the so-called Cycad Forest, a fever tree cluster, a herb farm, as well as other exotic plant related destinations.

The exquisite flora and rare plants of Mpumalanga and the indigenous uses thereof in medicine, food, drinks and cosmetics will be experienced during this tour. The Braille Tour will host blind and visually impaired visitors on a “touch, feel and smell” experience. These experiences will include the Braille trail inside Kruger National Park as well as a visit to Kwamadwala Elephant retreat where there will be opportunities to interact with the elephants; always experienced in awe by blind- and other tourists alike.

Ntwanano Tours is one of the preferred service providers for the recently established Tourism Cluster Project in Mpumalanga -  and initiative of the Tourism Enterprise Partnership.

Issued by: Ria Mills: Enanela Communication; C :083 260 7975; F : 086 650 4120

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