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Old 06-16-10, 10:15 AM
sjay2k sjay2k is offline
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SA has been interesting. The stadiums themselves are great, but it is quite difficult to get around.

Many of the locals have no hesitation about lying to you. If you ask a taxi driver if they know where X is, they will say "yes" even if they have no clue. The taxis never want to put their meters ("it is broken"), so you have to negotiate the fare beforehand (they normally try to gouge you for 2 - 4x what the meter price would be). We flew into an airport the other morning and a shuttle bus service told us their bus would "be here in 5 minutes", which ended up taking over an hour.

The streets are generally pretty sketchy (lots of scary poor dudes randomly standing around in groups), but nothing too bad. We ran into some scammers at a bar, but they were too stupid/obvious to get close.

The local white people are extraordinarily nice to other white people. As young white tourists, we are constantly offered favours and greeted by local whites. I think it's because white people are a small minority here, and they are reassured by other white people (who they view as safe).

The food is delicious. There are quite a lot of high quality shopping centres with excellent and inexpensive food. Lots of Indian places, as well as local SA game steakhouses.

Capetown is awesome, Durban is sketchy, Joburg is v sketchy and Pretoria is decent.