Pretoria (the actual capital of South Africa) was actually a nice enough place to spend a few days. We were in a nice backpackers place with a friendly Irish owner situated in the student area of the city. But the place had no bikes for rent (quite an annoyingly common problem in backpacker places in South Africa I've found), so we moved to another place down the road that did have bikes.
It turned out they only had one bike available, so I headed off of the day exploring while Sarah chilled out and used the Internet. Having a bike gives great freedom in checking out a city (a car is far too inconvenient when you don't know the city and can't get parking), so I had a great day. Cycling around the downtown area was a tad worrisome though as I was getting a few strange stares, as I think I stood out as a crazy tourist target (everyone else was arriving at tourist locations in tour buses). But I just cruised about and also used the bike to check out a few different car rental places about the town. I was kinda nervous about it really, as I've never rented a car before (since I still can't drive one properly - something I'm quite proud of in fact. Luckily, for whoever is reading this, I'm not in the mood for one of my rants right now, so I won't wax lyrically on the benefits of living inside 'the machine' unburdened by a car).
Anyway, after checking out a few options I think I managed to get a good deal. We got a Toyota Corolla 1.4 for 31 days, with power steering and air conditioning - not the cheapest option by any means, but I thought the AC would be a nice luxury (although we've actually only needed it a couple of times). We've already extended that rental period twice - first by one week, then by a further two weeks, and will have to ring them again tomorrow to extend a third time - no idea by how much yet.
So naturally enough Sarah was quite nervous about driving a strange car in a strange country. But at least we'd been in the Pretoria area for a couple of days, so she knew the local roads and she had no problems at all as we just drove back from the rental place to the supermarket and back to our hostel before hitting the highway...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Yebo Pat and Sarah! Keep delaying your departure, we might meet up again in December. In the meantime, stay safe. Lucky Dube, SA's greatest reggae musician was murdered in a carjacking yesterday, it can happen to anyone. That's akin to Bono getting whacked out in Dublin (although some might say that wouldn't be a bad thing).
Yeah, thanks for that - like we need yet another horror story from South Africa. Still, it is easy to fall into a false sense of security I suppose, so I'll make sure to renew my personal security procedures immediately.
Post a Comment