They are calling them scalpel safaris. Hundreds of British women are flocking to South Africa to witness the delights of the country's wildlife - and arrive home looking years younger.
Travel agents are marketing the joys of constant South African sunshine with the opportunity to have plastic surgery through special combined packages that cost a fraction of the price here.
Surgeons and Safari will help patients organise a whole package of game viewing and plastic surgery. Clients are met at the airport and guided through every stage of the process for one week or a fortnight.
It is already proving a success. Last week two British women from Guernsey, Diana Davison and Kathleen Rosenthal, were recovering after their surgery. Davison said they were looking forward to returning home looking a few years younger. 'I had an insurance policy payout and I didn't want a cruise. This just seemed a good idea,' said Davison, 65.
For Perin Lewis, plastic surgery was not a matter of looking younger. It was just a desire to press the pause button on the ageing process. 'I just wanted to suspend the effects of gravity for a while,' said the 61-year-old Londoner.
Everything is on offer in South Africa and the market is estimated to have quadrupled over the past two years as a result of foreign women - and a few men - taking advantage of low prices and well-trained surgeons.
Lewis, who organises conference events from her Hampstead house, has no regrets about choosing to go to South Africa, where her daughter, a model, had already had several operations.
'It has been fantastic. I was so impressed,' said Lewis, who has had a face and eye lift. Lewis has recommended the treatment to dozens of her friends, 10 of whom have since followed her advice and headed south for an operation and a spot of game viewing.
The result has been boom time in the spotless and ultra-modern clinics of Johannesburg and Cape Town. 'At first it spread just by word of mouth, mainly from people who had left South Africa to go and live in Britain and told their British friends about standards here. But now the demand is just exploding,' said Dr Saul Braun, who runs the Rosebank Clinic in Johannesburg and operated on Lewis and her friends.
Braun believes he has operated on more than 130 British women in the past year. They constitute the bulk of foreign women coming for operations, with the rest being made up of patients from elsewhere in Europe or the United States. About 70 per cent of the women are after face-lifts or breast operations, but others come for nose operations or liposuction.
Despite South Africa's international image often being associated with crime and declining standards in public services, South African plastic surgery is among the best in the world. 'At first glance people might think coming here might be like going to some place such as Ecuador or Brazil, but it is not like that. The standards here are exceptional,' said another Johannesburg-based plastic surgeon, Alastair Lamont.
In part this has been created by a healthy local market. Like much of the United States - and unlike Britain - many wealthy South Africans, especially whites, see plastic surgery as a run-of-the-mill operation and nothing to try to hide or be ashamed of.
Another of the main driving forces behind the boom in foreigners is economic. Due to the collapse of the rand, surgery in South Africa is very cheap. In Britain a face-lift could cost around £9,000. In South Africa it will cost around £3,200, and that includes flights, a two-week stay in a top hotel and meals in quality restaurants.
Trips to the game reserves are optional, but most people will spend at least some time on safari.
'Why have a boob job in the UK, when you can have it done here, have a holiday, and still pay less. Essentially it is a first world service at third world prices,' said Dr Paul Skoll, a Cape Town-based plastic surgeon.
Another advantage of combining a holiday in South Africa with a spell under the surgeon's knife is the opportunity to cover up the fact that the operation has been done. In Britain many patients are reluctant to admit they have been operated on and want to disguise their new youthful appearance as the product of a rejuvenating holiday in the sun.
Jane Matthews, 59, used that excuse when she returned to her job in the investment industry after having an eye-lift. 'People just put it down to having a relaxing holiday,' she said.
