South Africa Getting There & Away

Getting There & Away

By plane

South Africa's two major international airports are at Cape Town and Johannesburg. Regular flights arrive from major centers throughout Africa including: Blantyre, Cairo, Gaborone, Dar es Salaam, Harare, Lilongwe, Livingstone, Luanda, Lusaka, Kinshasa, Maputo, Manzini, Maun, Mauritius, Nairobi, Victoria Falls and Windhoek. When travelling from Cape Town International Airport you must be very careful, especially when using the N2 (highway). Hundreds of people are getting killed on this road, bricks thrown through windscreens from bridges etc.

Direct flights also arrive from major European centers, including: Amsterdam, Lisbon, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich and Athens. There are also direct flights from Dubai, Doha, New York, Atlanta, Washington (D.C.), Buenos Aires, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Perth. You may also want to have a look at Discount airlines in Africa.

See Air travel in South Africa for detailed information.

By car

You might be unfamiliar with road signs.The roads within South Africa, connecting most major cities, and between its immediate neighbors are very good. There are many highways connecting the cities and larger centres, including the N1 running from Cape Town through Johannesburg and Pretoria up to Harare, Zimbabwe, the N2 running from Cape Town to Durban, which passes through the world-famous Garden Route near Knysna, and the N3 between Durban and Johannesburg.

To get a car in South Africa there are basically three options, you can hire a car, buy one or use the so-called buy-back option. Hiring a car is fairly easy and bookings can be made online and in all major cities. Buying a car takes a bit more pre-caution (Roadworthy license, registering the car), but there is a lively used car market in South Africa. The third option is a combination of both, as you buy a car with a guarantee that the rental company will buy-back your car at the end of the contract.

Some of the main roads have only one lane in each direction, especially where they are far from urban centers. Toll roads generally have two or more lanes in each direction. South Africa has a high rate of traffic fatalities, and you may want to avoid driving at night except in urban areas. Watch out for unsafe drivers (minibus taxies), poor lighting, and pedestrians (who are the cause of many accidents, especially at night). When driving outside of the major cities you will often encounter animals, wild and domestic, in or near the roadway. The locals tend to herd their cattle and goats near the road. If you see an animal on or by the road, slow down, as they are unpredictable. Do not stop to feed wild animals!

Also, make sure you understand the road signs. A special kind of crossing is the 'four way stop' where the car that stops first has right of way. Take special care when entering traffic circles, as the general attitude of South African drivers is that traffic circles do not constitute a traffic management roadway structure, and do not use their indicators in a safe and predictable fashion. In general, South Africans tend to speed excessively and are prone to selfish or aggressive driving behaviour, such as tailgating and hooting. South African driving is on the left-hand side of the road, although, on multi-lane roadways, the principle of keep-left, pass right, is not adhered to.

If you speed and are pulled over by the police, depending on your nationality, you may have to pay your fine on the spot. Yet don't bother asking for a receipt! (DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BRIBE OFFICIALS. This is illegal and may get you arrested).

By bus

There are scheduled bus services between Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban and other cities (with stops in between), as well as connections to neighboring countries. The three main bus companies are:

Greyhound Intercape Mainliner Translux Smaller services include City Bug and Lowveld Link.

An alternative is the Baz Bus. It offers a regular hop-on-hop-off service on some of the most interesting routes for the tourist (Cape Town to Durban via the Garden Route; Durban to Johannesburg via Swaziland; Durban to Johannesburg via the Drakensberg). Baz Bus picks you up and drops you off at many hostels along the route, so you don't have to hang around at a downtown bus stop at night.

If you're really in a pinch, you can use minibus taxi's. They are poorly maintained and rarely comply with safety standards. They also require patience as they make many detours and changeovers at the taxi rank (hub) where the driver will wait for passagers to fill up the bus. But they cover many routes not covered by the main bus service and are quite cheap (25 cents per kilometer per person on the main routes).