We held our first blog awards ceremony last night at Neighbourhood in Cape Town’s Long Street.
The blog awards were really about celebrating the Getaway bloggers. There are more than 160 of them toiling away on their laptops about their travels, adventures and weekend escapes, and we wanted to acknowledge their input, which has allowed us to win the best travel blog award at the SA Blog Awards for two years in a row.
We had a great turn out last night, with loads of our bloggers, travellers and photographers making up the crowd. Turns out bloggers know how to have a party! Thanks to everyone who made it – it was such fun.
Congratulations to all the blog awards winners!
Natalie Ward – Best Food Blogger
The award for the best food blog goes to Natalie Ward. She not only shares her incredibly delicious recipes, but also takes such great food photos that we often find ourselves gnawing on our screens at around 11:30.
Geoff Spiby – Best Photography Blog Award
The award for the best photography blog goes to a photographer who captures the essence of nature like no other. Whether it’s from the sky, underwater or from the ground, his photos are always breathtaking and inspiring.
Scott Ramsay – Best Wildlife Blogger
The best wildlife blogger award goes to someone who is currently travelling for an entire year, exploring the best nature reserves, game parks and wildlife sanctuaries in the country and capturing incredible images along the way.
Tony Park – The Lost Hogan Award
The Lost Hogan Award goes to a blogger who is actually native to Australia but seems to find himself constantly wandering the vast African plains, meeting friendly Zambians, eco-conscious gorillas, smooching giraffes and making Africa sound every bit as monumental as it is. The award goes to none other than the bush-bound, award–winning author Tony Park.
Christie Fynn – The Horny Award
The horny award can go to none other than our very own passionate rhino ambassador, Christie Fynn. Christie sleeps, talks, blogs and eats (well maybe not eats) rhino, and her blogs about rhino poaching have undoubtedly raised awareness of the situation. She’s now a go-to media person for numerous rhino charities and organizations. We say being horny rocks!
Anton Crone – The Aristotle Award
The Aristotle award goes to one of our ponderous bloggers who always looks a little deeper, finding meaning, resolution and philosophy in everything: a true renaissance man with a motorcycle helmet and a plan.
Evan Haussmann – The Malema Award
This award goes to one of our bloggers who recently landed in a bit of ‘excrement’ about a blog title that stretched our readers’ ideas of political correctness. As bloggers, we’re always testing the waters and pushing the boundaries, and occasionally there are going to be one or two people who don’t like it. In this case, it wasn’t a kak job, someone did it and it’s still one of the most popular blogs on our site. Well done Evan Haussmann.
Linda Schonknecht – The Spelling Bee Award
Tyson Jopson and I spend hours every day editing blogs and we just love bloggers who don’t make typos. What we love even more is bloggers who test their spell check abilities to the limits. The queen of spell-check-testing is Linda Schonknecht!
Ming-Cheau Lin – The Peking Duck Award
This food blogger wins the award for inspiring people never to get Chinese takeout again – her Chinese recipes, such as steam-fried pork buns, shiitake soup, and the classic Peking duck have readers rushing out to buy chopsticks and mung bean paste.
Jan Braai – The Best Braaier Award
There is only one man in South Africa who deserves the mantle of the country’s best braaier, and we are honoured that he’s one of our bloggers.
Overall winner
We love all of our 163 bloggers, but someone has to win.
The winner of the 2012 Getaway blog awards is Lucy Corne! Lucy has sipped (or should we say downed) her way to victory after attending every beer event in town, visiting every microbrewery she can find, and judging 101 beers at the Cape Town Festival of Beer and somehow managing to blog articulately about it all. Lucy wins an awesome weekend away for two to Tanda Tula, a luxury camp in the Timbavati Private Game Reserve, worth R19 000.
Congratulations to all our winners, and another big thank you to our 160 bloggers who make this blog what it is!
Getting home safely
We’re always up for a party, but we don’t drink and drive. Last night we used the services of 1fortheroad and we can totally recommend them. They’ll drive you and your car home safely. www.1fortheroad.co.za
