South Africa - scared!

slopemaster

Well, I've decided to go for it and booked the flights!

sandsy

Well done! Now happy planning -feel free to ask questions!
I love planning our SA trips.

slopemaster

So far the plan is to stay in a hotel actually inside the airport, so as to get a night's sleep before picking up the hire car and having to deal with anything.

According to Tripadvisor, corrupt police demanding bribes (for imaginary offences like failing to stop at a stop sign) can be a big problem when leaving the airport in a hire car. The advice is not to pay, but this would be hard to deal with when tired.
(In any case I find the inevitable attempts to upsell by the car hire companies hard to deal with when I'm tired - I tend to lose my temper if they're too insistant.)

We'll then drive out to Waterval-Boven where we'll be camping and climbing.

Currently researching Kruger and getting very excited about lions and elephants and giraffes and hippos and crocs.......none of which I've ever seen except for an elephant that lived in an Indian temple.
Which ones is it have big ears???

sandsy

Big ears= African elephants

callum9999

slopemaster wrote: »

So far the plan is to stay in a hotel actually inside the airport, so as to get a night's sleep before picking up the hire car and having to deal with anything.

According to Tripadvisor, corrupt police demanding bribes (for imaginary offences like failing to stop at a stop sign) can be a big problem when leaving the airport in a hire car. The advice is not to pay, but this would be hard to deal with when tired.
(In any case I find the inevitable attempts to upsell by the car hire companies hard to deal with when I'm tired - I tend to lose my temper if they're too insistant.)

We'll then drive out to Waterval-Boven where we'll be camping and climbing.

Currently researching Kruger and getting very excited about lions and elephants and giraffes and hippos and crocs.......none of which I've ever seen except for an elephant that lived in an Indian temple.
Which ones is it have big ears???

The police bribes can happen anywhere - there's an exorbitant amount of road blocks in the country. Even though we were an organised tour bus we were constantly being stopped and the driver got fined a couple of times despite being adamant that he wasn't speeding (whether he actually was speeding however I don't know!). They negotiated the fine which leads me to think it wasn't actually an official fine though.

I don't know if all the camps do it (I was at the main one) but you should definitely do the night drive in Kruger if you can. After giving up on seeing lions (the rest of your list are pretty easy to see), I did the night drive on the last night there and saw a male and female just sitting in a clearing about 5m away from the jeep.

hollydays

callum9999 wrote: »

I can assure you that the risks in the US are a fraction of the risks in South Africa. It is an incredibly violent place - particularly Johannesburg. I'm not aware of any places in the US, for example, that have armed militias patrolling city streets and torturing suspects. You may have also noticed the recent events in several areas where they've started beating African immigrants to death for "stealing their jobs".

The only caveat I'd add to that is a lot of the violence etc. is aimed at other Africans and not tourists. There's a high chance of muggings etc., but not so much of murder/assault. I think in my recent trip there I met 4 groups who'd had their cars broken into, one of which had all their clothes/possessions inside so lost everything, 2 people had their wallets stolen, 1 person had their passport stolen, 1 person was stopped at gun point at a red-light and on my tour, 3 people had all their belongings stolen from the truck at a campsite.

Despite painting a picture of some kind of violent hell-hole, I greatly enjoyed the trip none-the-less! If you're of a particularly nervous disposition then maybe give it a miss, but any normal person would be fine - and as long as you're sensible, are unlikely to be a victim of any major crime. I also agree with your general point though - people listen to stereotypes too much and forget you could just as easily be a victim of crime walking in a dodgy area of London or New York.

And I guess this illustrates the oft given advice not to leave your cases etc unattended in your vehicle.

pelirocco

We went a couple of years ago driving the garden route and never once felt uneasy

slopemaster

Night drive -will look into that, thanks

callum9999

slopemaster wrote: »

Night drive -will look into that, thanks

Make sure you choose night, not evening/sunset (or do both on consecutive days) - there's a better chance of seeing the lions when it's dark. It only cost about £11 each as well for 2 hours - bargain!