"To see the spring flowers in bloom"

I went on a bus trip to Namaqualand advertised a"To See the Spring flowers in Bloom" trip to Springbok from 17th Sept to 22nd Sept. with a company called Traveltime. because of the known drought the country is experiencing I checked a week before the due date of departure to make sure there would be flowers as that was my sole purpose for going on this trip and was assured that the organizer had checked on the flower hot line and that there were flowers. Well let me assure you that there were absolutely no flowers anywhere and not only were there no flowers and every time she asked people in the area while up there she was told there were no flowers. There were a number of things about this trip that were really bad. A few of our meals that we paid up front for were inedible. .and there was more so on my return I wrote to the organizer of Traveltime to express my disappointment and listed my grievances. The reply I got was filled with excuses and justifications but not in any way a suggestion of offering some compensation or apology. Any reputable company would have made some offer to compensate me .Instead I was accused of sending a scathing email of criticism and she felt I had hurt her feelings. In my opinion that in itself is an extremely unprofessional response . I would never go with this company on a trip again and I want to warn people thinking of traveling up to Namaqualand to make sure that there has been some rain and that the flowers are out before heading up all that way. it was truly heart breaking to see how parched the landscape was. On our last day we entered the national park near Langabaan for a couple of hours before returning home and saw an abundance of magnificent flowers. I did not need to spend 6 days ravelling at a great deal of expense and loss of income to me to barren Namaqualand when I could have taken myself for the day to the national park to see an abundance of flowers