A reader asked about places to stay in Cape Town. Cape Town is my favourite SA city and Durban second. I travelled in SA many years ago but here are some suggestions.
The SA government tourist bureau had reasonable trips to the game parks. Go to your city library and check out all the budget books on SA get city maps from SA tourist bureau in your country. Find the location of places that interest you on map and write right on map the address, price, etc. I loved SA and think you will too. Do not be afraid of it.
The Jo’burg City Tourist Information Centre was wonderful. They gave me a map and marked on it the location of places to stay in my price range, how to get there by public transportation and I believe even phoned. I think I had taken some used postal stamps along and asked if anyone there collected stamps and gave them to them. While I stayed at the YMCA conveniently located next to Botanical Garden and I think took both sexes and also included breakfast there were many reasonable place to stay and with the good rate of exchange one can go more upscale if they wish. Also when I left SA I asked at the Tourist Bureau if they had any posters with animals I could have. I still have some hanging in my room.
Johannesburg and maybe even Cape Town had free bus tourist trips on Sunday I think sponsored by Chamber of Commerce each Sunday a different one. I brought elephant hair bracelets to bring back to States as gifts. They take hair from an elephants tail (a rather dangerous job) and make a bracelet. If you wear this you will never be attacked by tigers (not in South Africa – but maybe where there are tigers!) and they don’t weigh much in luggage. Some make these bracelets out of plastic and pass off as elephant hair. If you light a match to them I think the plastic will burn.
I took a reasonable several day sightseeing trip of Kruger Game Park (bigger than some states like Connecticut) that I booked in railroad station at SA tourist bureau there. If any globetrotters have had any military time I usually ask tourist bureaux the location of any military clubs. They are good sources of information, reasonable food and drinks and sometimes you being a visitor members will invite you to their homes of tell you of reasonable accommodations. As I mentioned in SA it was MOTH clubs (military order of tin hats from WWI), Comrade Clubs (British oriented), in Australia Returned Servicemen’s Clubs (all military veterans clubs have some people that were never in military!).
The Carlton Center (tall round skyscraper commercial building in Johannesburg had Soweto town sightseeing trips conducted by a tribesman in a pink bus. Money went to town of Soweto to help them out: reasonable and certainly unusual. In a nutshell go to the State run Tourist Bureaus or government tourist bureau in airport, find out public transportation into town. Have them mark on map location of their suggestions.
Happy Travelling TSgt Wilfred L. McCarty Rtd
If you would like to contact Mac, a 78 year old retired military, and extremely well travelled to boot, he is happy to answer any questions even if his information may be out of date. Mac can be e-mailed at macsan400@yahoo.com
