Driving in South Africa

[Deleted]

I used to live in South Africa and did a lot of road trips.

The driving isn't bad and only took me a day to get used to driving on the other side, but I'm a pretty easy going "natural" driver who has done a lot of road trips.

I don't think drivers are that terribly crazy there. In the cities pretty typical traffic. On your road trip just be prepared for high speeds and cars passing you on 2 lane high ways whenever wherever. I don't think I ever drove the exact route you're taking but roads are typically good but can have spots of potholes/bumps. But nothing like I've ever seen in other countries.

Driving in South Africa is much better than driving in Mozambique or Namibia!

[GilliC]

We drove from Joburg to Kruger, and it was a wide divided highway for most of the route. Verrrrry easy. The only catch was there was some area just outside or on the edge of the city that we were warned in advance not to stop for gas, because of the even-higher-than-Joburg crime rates.

The only significant thing I remember was that everyone flashes their emergency lights a few times to thank you for letting them pass. We started doing the same. I went to look that up to make sure I wasn't imagining it, and found this article, which is pretty comprehensive:
www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g293740-c114280/South-Africa:Driving.In.South.Africa.html
 
Driving within Kruger is also quite easy. All the roads are very well maintained.

And I completely agree with @wandering 's last statement! Our visit to Kruger was after a few days in Mozambique. This was before they'd done much work at all on the EN1, and driving in South Africa, even on dirt roads in the park, was like heaven after that.

[dutchgirl678]

I went to SA in 2002. I only went to Cape Town and Stellenbosch and drove the Garden Route though. But I got used to driving on the wrong side of the road pretty quickly. I already was familiar with manual transmission at that point. It wasn't a problem though, traffic was pretty easy to navigate.

[Deleted]

Sept 21, 2015 21:12:19 GMT -5 @32flavors said:

Aug 18, 2015 17:38:16 GMT -5 @wandering said:

I used to live in South Africa and did a lot of road trips.

The driving isn't bad and only took me a day to get used to driving on the other side, but I'm a pretty easy going "natural" driver who has done a lot of road trips.

I don't think drivers are that terribly crazy there. In the cities pretty typical traffic. On your road trip just be prepared for high speeds and cars passing you on 2 lane high ways whenever wherever. I don't think I ever drove the exact route you're taking but roads are typically good but can have spots of potholes/bumps. But nothing like I've ever seen in other countries.

Driving in South Africa is much better than driving in Mozambique or Namibia!

It looks like we are skipping the road trip and have arranged air since we have such little time. We want to hire a driver to take us to the wineries from our hotel in cape town. The hotel offers to arrange a full day tour of Paarl and Frranschoek with wine and cheese tasting etc for R3350. Do you have any other suggestions?

When I used to go to the wineries I'd either drive myself or take the train from Cape Town and then walk around. So I'm not going to be much help. My friend did organize a tour once for her birthday, but she did the organizing so I have no clue the name of the company. However, I can guarantee you that there was no way that we paid R3350...way over our budgets. It was a full day tour, they picked us up wherever we wanted (which was at the Engen by our house in Gardens) and then took us to 4 wineries, one of which we went on a tour. It also included lunch. So I'm sure if you do some googling you can find something less expensive.