For those of you who have traveled on a Savvy Navigator gay tour to South Africa, a trip highlight was always the Cape Town dinner with local historian, actor and raconteur, Guy Willoughby. 

This morning, we received word that Guy passed away today, and this saddens us greatly.

Over the past several years, Guy entertained and regaled our travelers with his insightful take on the history of South Africa, as well as the gay history of the country. An evening with Guy was always interesting and fun, and one never knew what to expect. I, Jeff, honestly believe that my own knowledge of Southern Africa history is based on the evenings spent with Guy.

Guy was truly a savvy friend, whose presence made the Savvy Navigator tour different from any other. He will be greatly missed.

Here’s his Cape Times obituary:

Cape Town - Actor, director, playwright and entertainment writer Guy Willoughby died on Tuesday of Aids-related complications, after being ill for some time.

"We've lost a great actor. He was brave and clear-sighted to the end," ex-wife Finuala Dowling told News24. "He's been sick for a while and it was a relief to speak to him about his illness and approaching death."

His death was met with shock and great sadness in the industry.

"Guy was extremely witty and wit rather than farce made him laugh. I remember him having an incredible turn of phrase," actor Anthea Thompson told News24.

She said that Willoughby was a comedian who displayed passion and creativity in his work.

Passionate and driven

"I saw a stand-up that he wrote and his work was topical and he would also look at the funny side of things - that make ordinary people laugh. He was a passionate and driven man and the range of his work was incredible."

"Of course his creativity rubbed off on those around him. I played opposite him in a play (African Star) that he wrote and he was hands on and incredibly on the go."

However, she added that Willoughby was demanding of himself in the work that he did.

"Guy was a hard task master and was very hard on himself; he always wanted the best, but I never saw him shout at somebody because they weren't doing something exactly the way he wanted."

Willoughby, renowned in entertainment and media circles, also wrote for newspapers around the country, including the Mail & Guardian, Sunday Times and Cape Times.

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Fair warning and full-disclosure notice here: This one’s for the airline geeks…

For those of you who know me well, you know that I’ve been a lifelong, passionate aficionado and fan of commercial aviation. Those close to me affectionately refer to me as the airline über-geek.

Imagine my extreme pleasure when I discovered the Flight Memory website a while ago. Flight Memory is designed specifically for my geek brethren and me, and allows us to input or upload our flight data into their online database. The website provides a repository for our flight statistics, as well as the ability to generate very, very cool maps.

Here’s how it worked for me: I have an Excel file where I keep all of my flight log data. Every time I fly, I capture the basic flight information, including the aircraft registration (aka the tail number) in my database. I’ve been keeping this database since my 20s. It comes in handy when I want to see if I’ve previously flown on a particular plane, or, more importantly, when there’s an incident.

For example, when Captain Sully put N106US into the Hudson River earlier this year, I was able to query the database and see that I’d flown twice on this particular aircraft, twice in 2001 on the USAirways Shuttle between DCA and LGA. But I digress….

After creating my Flight Memory account, I shipped off the database to the website guys, paid my low fee, and they uploaded everything into my account. Ince it was all uploaded, I had to do some manual adjusting of the data, but the bottom line is that I now have some very, very cool statistics and the ability to generate maps. With this data, I also can order some beautiful posters and with the premium membership, I have the ability to really play with the data and generate even cooler maps.

Here’s what my Stats Overview page looks like:

Here’s a visual representation of my domestic flying:

And, lastly, here’s my international personal route map:

Go take a look at Flight Memory’s website, and if you’re like me, you’ll have yet another cool tool to facilitate procrastination. 

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The fabulous Heather Poole Flight Attendant Blogger Extraordinaire has started a new trend – photographing her Savvy Navigator bag tag in various places around the world! More and more Savvy friends have been asking about how they can get one, so we've decided to make you an offer you can't refuse:

For a limited time, If you’d like to receive your very own bag tag, AND promise to send back photos of it in use around the world, we’ll send you one FOR FREE! Just click here to let us know where to send it.

This just in from the Londolozi Game Reserve in Sabi Sand, South Africa, about the beloved female leopard whom many of us here at Savvy Navigator observed, loved and respected over the years:

It’s another typical July winters day. The halcyon blue and honey hued bushveld is treading its way to the wind and dust of august and another season – something new. The bizarre and the surreal is something you get used to around here, like the changing of the seasons. But in this particular run-of-the-mill July week, two quite dramatic events are unfolding. The first, not ten kilometres from the lodge a friend lies dying. If you have passed through Londolozi in the last 17 years you will probably have met her. If you lingered to work and share the dream you will probably have befriended her. If you were a ranger or tracker you will probably have come to love her. I am talking, of course, of the 3:4 female.

Her life story is told somewhere else - in fact in many places. So I am not going to rehash her remarkable life for you here. Rather, I would like to comment on the alluring effect she has on so many. As I write this, she has not yet passed to wherever good mother leopards go. And over the past two years she always seemed on death’s door, but this time her back legs can no longer bear her weight, she cannot climb trees and to follow her piece of shade, she has to crawl around using her front legs. Skeletally thin, with sunken eyes she waits, probably for a hyena, to close the chapter on what for a leopard is probably an ordinary tale. So many of the staff at Londolozi have gone to say their last goodbye to a leopard who was able to bridge the gap between man and wild animal. That is no ordinary tale.

She has shared her 17 years with us, her trials and tribulations of motherhood, her constant battles with other predators and her successes and failures on hunts. She has posed for photographers and at times frustrated our best efforts to find her. Truthfully, how do you bid farewell to such an awe inspiring animal. Do you watch her last breath or just let the end become another of those wonderful bushveld mysteries?

I’m not sure what the answer is, but the second dramatic event is the respect that is being accorded her in a very Shangane fashion. Rangers and trackers are all wearing small black ribbons attached to their shirt sleeves with safety pins, in memory of her. This is normally reserved for important members of the Shangane community. To say that she has had a pronounced effect on those that have known her is a profound understatement, just like the one Elmon uttered a few weeks ago while watching her in good health “this one is a good leopard."

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