Weekly Travel News Recap, 3 May: Flooding in Maasai Mara, fuel prices increase, and more

Catch up on all the latest travel news with Drive South Africa.

Each week, our team scours the web for the most interesting, trending, and unusual travel news, conservation news, and motoring news stories. Here are this week’s biggest scoops.

Travel News

• Heavy rains trigger flooding in the Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. The reserve says the Talek River broke its banks, causing substantial flooding in Talek Town and leaving several tourist camps underwater. The Purungat Bridge has also collapsed, hampering communication and access. All staff and guests have been successfully evacuated.

• Ireland considering ending visa-free travel for South Africans. According to reports, nationals of Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo have been using South African passports to seek asylum in the Republic of Ireland. The country expects high numbers of asylum seekers in coming months and may want to tighten existing processes.

• Delta Airlines to reintroduce daily flights to Lagos, Nigeria. The US airline will also make improvements to routes to other African destinations including several cities in South Africa. It adds that it is in the process of responding to increasing tourism demands on the continent.

• Firefighters contain Table Mountain fire in Cape Town. The Skeleton Gorge fire burned around 238 ha of vegetation after igniting on 27 April. Prevailing “berg” wind conditions continue to fan the fire, although firefighters have contained most of the active areas and several hiking trails have been reopened.

• Henley & Partners report finds almost a third of African applicants were denied Schengen visas in 2022. Despite submitting the fewest applications per capita, Africa had a 30% visa refusal rate, 12.5% higher than the global average. Mehari Taddele Maru of the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute says “the European visa system demonstrates apparent bias against African applicants”.

• Proposed 27 km underwater tunnel could connect Europe to North Africa in time for 2030 FIFA World Cup. Several parties are exploring the possibility of connecting Morocco’s Al Boraq high-speed rail line to existing rail networks in Spain via an underwater tunnel. First suggested in 1981, the tunnel could be completed in time for the 2030 World Cup, set to take place in Spain, Portugal, and Morocco.

Conservation News

• Two Oceans Aquarium scrambles to care for hundreds of baby sea turtles after Cape Town storms. The aquarium says the turtles, which are mostly loggerhead turtles, washed up on Cape shores during a severe storm. It plans to rehabilitate 400 of the 530 animals and has sent the rest to two other aquariums.

• Lion rescued from Ukraine arrives at sanctuary in South Africa. Four Paws Netherlands rescued Vasylyna from Ukraine after she escaped captivity in war-torn Kharkiv. She has now been relocated to Lionrock, Four Paws’ large sanctuary in South Africa, along with another lion rescued from Montenegro.

Automotive News

• Highway robberies on the rise in South Africa. According to Business Tech, there has been a significant increase in the number of reported cases of criminals placing spikes or other dangerous objects on roads to cause damage to vehicles, aiming to rob them. Numerous incidents have been reported in and around Pretoria, and the Gauteng Traffic Police says most take place on Friday evenings and throughout the weekend.

• Petrol and diesel prices increase as of 1 May. Both grades of petrol increased by 37 cents per litre, while diesel 500 ppm and diesel 50 ppm fell by 30 cents per litre and 36 cents per litre, respectively. For more information, see our Fuel Cost Calculator.

Missed out on this week’s Drive South Africa blogs? Catch up on them here.

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