Driving In South Africa

POSTED ON JULY 10, 2017

Driving in South Africa is a fun experience that we will never forget. We’re so used to having the driver operate the vehicle on the left hand side of the car in the States, in Mexico, and in the Philippines. Sometimes it is quite funny when the passenger walks over to the right hand side of the car and thinks that they are walking over to the passenger’s seat. We caught ourselves doing so and we would let out a chuckle. South Africa has their driver on the right hand side and it can take a while to get used to that. We chose to rent a car while in Cape Town, since we had a two-week stay there and wanted to explore the towns nearby.

 

The car we decided to rent had a manual transmission, so it took some time getting used to using the opposite set of hands to move the steering wheel around as well as shifting with your left hand instead of your right hand. The reason for renting a stick shift vehicle was to cut costs since a majority of people rent out automatic transmission cars. We also went with an economic car to save on fuel. We didn’t need a spacious nor luxurious car to move around. We wanted something practical, cost effective, not too flashy, and a car that could get good mileage. After all, we’re here to explore.

 

Once we were acquainted with our car, we also had to get used to driving on the opposite side of the road. It was interesting to notice that the sidewalks were no longer on our right side. And when you make turns, you are now turning your vehicle into the most inner part of the lane on the opposite side of the road. Hope this makes sense, but it’s confusing at first when driving. Nonetheless, you’ll get used to it if you follow the car ahead of you.

 

After accustoming ourselves to driving, we were unstoppable. Make sure to stay a few kilometers under the speed limit as there are random speed cameras throughout the freeways. We visited the wine country of Stellenbosch and were happy we could stay as long as we wanted to since we had our own transportation. We also ventured off to Muizenberg and Simon’s Town and stopped at any beach we wanted to. It was so convenient and practical to have our own car there and we definitely took advantage of that. Another cool road trip we took was to Cape Point. We have to admit though that we were a bit scared of the baboons breaking into our car when driving there. None of that happened. In fact, we didn’t see any baboons there.

 

Driving in Cape Town was fairly easy as the city is mellow, the roads are in great condition and signs are easy to follow. You won’t get lost. We felt very safe and comfortable driving in the towns nearby too. We could not say the same for Johannesburg. Johannesburg has road signs that seem so abrupt that you might miss your exit, plus the drivers there move around too quickly. If you had to choose a place to drive around, we recommend you do it in Cape Town!