A random email in my inbox turned me on to a combination designed to grab the attention of any foodie, wanderlustian, and socially conscience individual — of course, at Perceptive Travel, we are all of the above.

The Khaya Cookie Company was formulated on a business model that assumes making a great product in a sustainable way with employees that are both inspired and given job stability makes for good business. So, although their main mission states that they’re “dedicated to creating jobs,” at both their production facility in South Africa and their distribution center in Philadelphia, it also means they want to make really good cookies while supporting sustainable farmers and local artisans.

In that, they’ve succeeded. I’ve tried them, and can attest — Khaya cookies are yummy.

But wait, there’s more!

I said this would appeal to wanderlustians. How does a free trip for two to Cape Town sound? Until July 15th only, if you order one box of Khaya cookies, you can enter Quest for Cape Town: a contest to win an all expense-paid 10-day trip to South Africa. Not only that, but if you win you actually get to choose from three different tours to suit your taste:

FOOD AND WINE: Food and wine excursion through Cape Town region’s finest wineries while dining in restaurants chosen to express the full range of South African cuisine.
ECO-TOURISM: An immersion in South Africa’s richest wildlife in spectacularly diverse environments including coast, forest, and savannah.
SUN AND SURF: A coastal adventure combining surf and mountain on and around Cape Town’s iconic Table Mountain, a 3500-foot rise climbing straight from the ocean’s edge.

Frankly, I’d have a hard time choosing, but that certainly didn’t stop me from going straight to the website and ordering my cookies. Being a responsible writer, blogger, whatever, I had to taste-test before recommending goodies to our loyal readers. And unfortunately the cranberry rooibos shortbread, orange rooibos shortbread, and chocolate & orange krunchi blew a hole straight through my post-San Francisco-foodie tour weight loss plan. The cookies come in a pleasant little box, and are made in tiny tidbit sizes that make for easy snacking (like I’m doing right now).

So try them yourself — order one to enter, or 3 boxes of cookies will get your shipping paid for, and you might get yourself shipped off to South Africa (if I don’t win instead).

It’s wintertime here in New Zealand which is fine if you like skiing. But I’m not a winter person – I usually spend the whole season plotting and scheming my way to a warmer location. This year it’s three weeks in California at the end of next month.

In the meantime, I’ll be doing a little armchair road tripping, following the adventures of not one but two separate road trips that are currently taking place in the U.S.A.

Want to come along the ride?

Join Alice’s Drive across the northern United States,  following the same route taken in 1909 by Alice Ramsey, the first woman drive across the country.  But not only does the Alice’s Drive road trip follow the same route, driver Emily Anderson is driving the same type car (a 1909 Maxwell, restored by Emily’s dad) that Alice drove. This bicentennial drive departed New York on June 9th and is half way, currently in Grand Island, Nebraska. If all goes to schedule, Emily (and Alice) will be arriving in San Francisco on July 9th. 

Alice’s Drive from Bengt Anderson on Vimeo.

Alice Ramsey was only 22 years old in 1909 when she undertook her road trip. Accompanied by three passengers, it took two months to travel the 3,800 miles from coast to coast. Hard to imagine now, but back then the only form of communication would have been the post and the telephone.  Today, of course, the whole trip is being blogged.

From Alice’s Drive it’s just a short jump over to the Recession Road Trip Blog, otherwise known as Where’s Christina?

As pointed out by World Hum, this blog, hosted by the Altantic, is one to watch. Starting off 11 days ago from Washington DC, Christina is planning, for the next four months, to “…travel the back roads and State highways through the 48 contiguous United States, uncovering stories of economic survival and endurance. In diners, bars, bingo halls and coffee shops, I seek those Americans who have lost everything–except hope.”

Anyone interested in the state of the nation, and it’s economic and social condition will want to tag along by following Christina’s blog posts and @RecessionRoadie tweets.

Happy Travels!

Remember Queensland’s Best Job in the World competition – a global search for someone to fill the position that required them to live on a tropical island for six months and earn a top salary by simply exploring the surrounds and writing, blogging, twittering, and vlogging about it. The campaign, which lasted a few months, attracted 34,000 applicants and provided the Queensland Tourist Board with unprecedented (and free) media coverage.  All in all, it was a brilliant form of advertising.

Since then, numerous business and tourism agencies have jumped on this idea and are offering variations of the Best Island Job although none as lucrative as the Queensland one.

The Taiwan Tourism Bureau is running The Best Trip in the World campaign.  In the first stage of the competition, which closes 30 June 2009, teams of two or more must submit a Plan for Team Travel in Taiwan based on a theme – ie green, spa, nature, etc – complete with video highlighting why they should be chosen.  50 teams will be chosen from this round to move onto the next round.  It gets a little complicated from there, so anyone interested should head over to the site and read the rules for themselves.

Meanwhile, Healdsburg winery Murphy-Goode in Northern California is running  A Really Goode Job campaign to find someone to spend six months learning the wine business, chatting and blogging with your online friends, making videos and living rent-free in Healdsburg.  And you’ll get paid $10,000 a month to do it. (this one is now closed for entries. They are in the process of picking the top 50 to move on to the second round).

On the other coast, in Florida, the Orlando Tourism Bureau is running the 67 Days of Smiles campaign that offers one couple a  furnished two-bedroom condo in downtown Orlando plus $25,000 for living expenses while they spend the next 67 days exploring all that Orlando has to offer and reporting back on it. Entry for this closes on 30 June 2009.

Back in Australia, there’s the World Nomad’s  Van-Tastic Adventures compaign which offers seven pairs of travelers the opportunity to win an ultimate Aussie roadtrip for six weeks. It’s a pretty sweet deal, with airfares provided from anywhere in the world, the use of a campervan, video equipment, and other assisted costs in exchange for blogging, podcasting, and videoing your experiences. The first round closes on 5 July 2009 so there is still time to enter.

And here in New Zealand,  a travel company (Entirely Kiwi) is running the Be Famous in New Zealand campaign which offers the winner the chance to tour New Zealand for three months, complete with transport, food, accommodation, camera and tickets. A few restrictions here – mainly the age (18-30) and the ability to get a visa. Entries 31st August.

Some tourism agencies and businesses have obviously discovered the value of social media over old-fashioned advertising.  After all, they are the ones that will gain the most out of these campaigns, getting free advertising through media outlets both online, on television, and in print.

For those who enter, however, it’s a different story. Having followed those who have entered these competitions, it’s clear that their time and effort is enormous compared to the possible payout.  Entrants often dedicate days and weeks to creating their own campaign to win the prize. As well as spending huge amounts of time creating an entry video, they also start blogging and twittering constantly about the campaign.  In the end, you have to wonder, is it really worth all the time and often money they sink into it.

So what do you think?

Who really wins?

Would love to hear from those who have entered into these campaigns whether it was worth the effort?

The San Francisco Ferry Building Marketplace is sort of like heaven defined for someone who is a semi-locovore (locovore: one who eats only locally produced food, often defined as food grown, produced, and processed within 100 miles of one’s home), absolutely adores good food, and likes to have something left in her wallet at the end of the day. On top of that, you get a laugh right off the bat: the first thing I saw walking in was the sign for the Boccalone Salumeria: “tasty salted pig parts.” You can’t get more direct than that, and the pig parts were both salted and very tasty.

And these aren’t just any pig parts. Because San Francisco is one of the world hubs of the locovore movement (the other being in Italy, where Slow Food started), the marketplace at the Ferry Terminal is a dedicated showcase for regional producers using traditional farming methods, artisan producers of things like cheese and olive oil (and tasty salted pig parts), and high-quality producers of California wine and other specialties. So those pig parts? They’re handcrafted in small batches in Oakland, using sustainably raised, heritage-breed pork. And the marketplace isn’t just about food, although it’s hard to pull yourself away from coffee at Blue Bottle followed by gelato from the Ciao Bella stand. You can also find beautiful kitchenware, and it was only luggage restrictions that kept me from flying back to New York with some of these gorgeous carved wooden bowls.

From artisanal bread to handcrafted cheese at the Cowgirl Creamery, and bits of those tasty salted pig parts from Boccalone to a few quickly shucked and slurped oysters at the Hog Island Oyster Company, you can assemble an amazing gourmet meal for a lot less than you’d spend at some of San Francisco’s better cafes. Being a hobbit at heart, I was repeatedly drawn to the mushroom displays at Far West Fungi, trying to figure out how I could get some fried in butter for a midday snack.

Instead, as we were lucky enough to have dropped in on a farmer’s market day (Tuesdays and Saturdays), we wandered through a maze of fresh fish, fruits, and vegetables outside to procure an open-faced sandwich of cured salmon and fresh cream cheese on local bread. The stand was located near the back of the farmer’s market, so I stood and munched while taking in this view of San Francisco. The food: excellent. The view: free. The Ferry Building foodie tour: priceless.

The intrepid and widely published travel photographer and writer — and former Perceptive Travel blogger! — Steve Davey is bringing his photographic and travel expertise to a wider audience. Not that you could get a lot wider than his books Unforgettable Places to See Before You Die and Unforgettable Islands to Escape to Before You Die, both excellent travel and photography compilations that took Steve to the higher echelons of the travel writing and photography world.

But now Steve’s doing something different. To coincide with the release of his new book Footprint Travel Photography, Steve Davey is launching a series of travel photography tours, with Morocco and India both being offered this fall.

It would be hard to pass up an opportunity like this. Long-time readers of the Perceptive Travel magazine and this blog will know that few people know India and Morocco like Steve Davey, and even fewer can give those incredible places the photographer’s eye like this long-time travel photographer and writer. If you doubt me, just check out this post on Marrakech or some of Steve’s thoughts on India in “On the veranda of my bungalow in my khaki pyjamas.”

So if you’re at all interested in these places, or in learning travel photography in the field from a renowned expert, these are tours you don’t want to miss. Impressions of Morocco starts 21 September 2009, and runs for 13 days, visiting the evocative cities of Fes, Casablanca and Marrakech, trekking in the High Atlas Mountains around the remote village of Armed, exploring ruins, gorges, kasbahs and holy sites, and spending a night under the stars in the Sahara Desert.

Impressions of India visits the stunning Taj Mahal, and the holy city of Varanasi before spending three days at the Sonepur Mela festival in Bihar. The largest livestock fair in Asia, this festival is noted for the ‘Haathi Bazaar,’ or second-hand elephant market. The tour will also visit the Buddhist pilgrimage site of Bodh Gaya with its strong Tibetan influence and the bustling city of Kolkata. The tour runs for 16 days from 26 October 2009.

Tours in the next two years will also include Southeast Asia and Southwest France. For more information about all these tours, including pricing and more extensive discussion of the technical photography aspects covered and taught, visit the Photo Tours website.