Your calls always answered within 5 rings.
Our flights went without a hitch - so smooth even the pick up in Dubai and the hotel was brilliant. Thank you everyone.
An hour didn't feel like enough time to transfer at Doha airport
As always - perfect
I have been a repeat customer of yours for many years. I use DAF because you deliver a very good service and you fix problems promptly when they arise.
Excellent customer service!
Saf Patel has always been incredible with his support with flights and I commend him for his effort and attention to detail.
No issues encountered, my trip was smooth.
Doug as usual, provided efficient and friendly service. He’s definitely a credit to the company.
Knowledgeable, personable and helpful staff. Thank you!
What a pleasure dealing with such a professional company.
Dexter was helpful at every point before and after the trip - really grateful
I always receive very good service from Brody Letchfield. He is very professional.
Always there to help! Well done, guys!
Absolutely love you guys, no stress.
Always a brilliant service and great flights -thank so much. Would highly recommend
Overall, friendly and very professional service. Extremely helpful
Theo was great - as ever
All good from Virgin lounge to Bulawayo and back.
Fantastic holiday and good resort
Efficient, good communication and a great price.
Declan is great
Wonderful place, wonderful holiday
All went exceptionally well - as usual. Thank you.
Everything was excellent. When it came to checking in you had sorted out everything for me. I didn't have any problems. Thank you
I was bumped from my pre-booked aisle seat from Addis to Manchester into the most uncomfortable window seat ever. Not DialAFlight fault. Also diabetic meals were poorest on any flight
Excellent service as always from Amelia and the team
Utter chaos at Heathrow as workers on strike. No wheelchair assistance for us. We had to walk from our plane to passport control - not ideal wearing a moonboot! Apparently every Tues, Wed and Thurs so please warn your clients.
Everything went precisely according to plan!
Everything ran smoothly. Good to receive call prior to departure to check all was OK
The two hotels were rather disappointing - and I would not recommend to other clients.
To ride the Blue Train between Pretoria and Cape Town is to travel along part of Britain's imperial history; a journey that is at once luxurious, breathtakingly beautiful and thought-provoking.
The railway heading north from the Cape was part of Cecil Rhodes's grand colonial vision: the 19th-century mining magnate, today the focus of intense political controversy, imagined a trans-port network from one end of Africa to the other to enable British trade and political dominion. It didn't happen but this remarkable train is part of his legacy.
After a night in Fairlawns in Johannesburg, a chic boutique hotel and spa set inside a former country estate, my companion and I head to Pretoria station and enter an older, genteel world, with a nostalgic colonial twist.
We board the bright blue train, with some 80 other passengers, and enter a world of wood-panelled comfort, with brass fittings, crisp linen and low golden lighting. The Blue Train is the Orient Express of Africa.
Once offering an overnight journey to the Cape, the Blue Train is now a deliberately slower experience, taking two nights for the 997-mile trip.
Our charming butler, Angela, has brought a bottle of South African spark-ling wine. The compartments are roomy, about 8m2, each with an Italian marble bathroom.
The train feels venerable and experi-enced, adding to the feeling one is riding a bit of history. I couldn't be happier.
A cocooned quiet pervades the cabin, just a faint rumble of the tracks audible through the wide picture window - double-glazed for tranquillity.
It's time to dress for dinner; dress code is 'elegant' for ladies and jacket and tie for gentlemen. I've opted for the linen suit with leather waistcoat, as worn by Robert Redford in Out of Africa.
The dining car is a vision in starched white tablecloths and heavy cutlery. Our waiter, Collen, has a deep sonorous delivery and virtually sings the menu. The food is delicious - seared scallops, cured salmon, duck breast, South African cheeses. The list of South African wines is positively tidal.
Collen is explaining that he once met the Queen. For a glorious moment I think he may be referring to Queen Victoria.
We totter back down the corridor, the sway only partly induced by the train's movement. You can sense the vastness outside; not a single light is visible, save a flutter of stars.
In the 1920s, steam locomotives plied the line between Cape Town and Johannesburg. After the war, the Blue Train service was launched, named after the blue steel trains introduced a few years earlier.
Rhodes died in 1902, but countless colonists still took this route north for the diamond and gold fields. Rhodes even had his own private carriage; his body was transported along this very line, stopping at every station for mourners to pay their respects.
In the morning, a blinding African sun slices through the blinds, which lift to reveal the plains stretching into the distance. We eat eggs benedict and fresh fruit and watch herds of tiny antelope flickering through the scrub.
Watching Africa glide past at a stately 30mph is mesmerising.
At mid-morning we pull into Kimberley, where diamonds were discovered on the farm belonging to the De Beer brothers in 1871, prompting the greatest diamond rush the world has seen. Here, until 1914, some 50,000 miners using picks and shovels extracted 6,000lb of diamonds.
We are driven to The Big Hole museum - exactly what the name indicates, a pit 460m wide and 240m deep, the largest hand-dug hole in the world, a testament to human ingenuity and man's hunger for gems. Now it's a ghostly place.
At Kimberley station, the station-master hands out South African sherry in tiny glasses engraved with the Blue Train logo.
The train sets off into the Great Karoo desert, the vast plateau the size of Germany whose name comes from a Khoi tribal word meaning 'land of great thirst'.
I sit in the observation car at the rear, watching the vast bushveld drift by, an undulating tableau of rock, semi-desert and sparse scrub. High tea is served in the lounge car, with cake and scones; another extravaganza is staged in the dining car in the evening, to the accompaniment of Collen's echoing baritone.
We awake descending towards the Cape, with vineyards stretching away under high granite outcrops, as our journey on this historical artefact rolls to a close. And our holiday is rounded off in wine country, with a few days in Majeka House, a delightful boutique hotel just outside Stellenbosch.
First published in The Times - May 2019
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