February 10, 2007
travel to Pretoria, South Africa
In April 2006, I spent a week in Pretoria for an EU/South Africa conference. I flew from Dublin to London with Aer Lingus and then London Heathrow to Johannesburg (JHB) with Virgin Atlantic (see my blog on Virgin Atlantic high-lights). Through the conference organisers in conjunction with the hotel, we were able to organise a hotel shuttle bus from JHB airport to the Holday Inn in Pretoria (it was a one hour drive). Upon checking in, the hotel staff told all attendees that it wasn’t safe to go anywhere on foot from outside the hotel doors. They would shuttle us everywhere we wanted to go either with the hotel shuttle, or that was not available, they would organise a private taxi. It ended up being quite expensive but was the safest option (around 10 euros each time even if you were going 50 metres up the road to a local restaurant). Some of the EU attendees felt the hotel staff were exaggerating and tried to walk down the street to a famous steakhouse and they were robbed at knife point right outside the hotel on the footpath. This story spread around like wildfire and after that, everyone because extremely cautious and vigilant. Due to the conference, I didn’t have very much time to go on any organised tours, which was a bit of a pity.
Posted by jclarke at 3:31 PM
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