What was wrong with the drive to the office?

Getting to work when you're traveling is usually a simple thing. Today, however, I found myself driving on the "wrong" side of the car, the "wrong" side of the road, and on the wrong roads to the office.

SA drives like the Brits: steering wheel on the right, on-coming traffic to your right. That was the first (and second) challenge. After that was the small issue of directions. Jo'burg is NOT a place you want to wander around. We had a map, but....

Eventually, we got to the office (only 5 mins behind schedule!) and lived to blog about it.

Why not take a taxi? Like many African cities, Johannesburg has a chaotic informal public transport system in the form of minibus "taxis". These are not taxis in the typical Western sense of the term – they won't give you a lift to your doorstep. Rather, they are small-scale bus services, often unmarked, operating with neither timetables nor formal stops. You can read more here.

There are taxis your hotel can call (I'm at the InterContinental Sandton Towers) that are more familiar to most travelers. But unlike many things in Jo'Burg, these taxis are relatively expensive. If you're here for a long time, you'll run up a big tab, which makes renting cheaper, and easier once you get the hang of it. (Tomorrow will be better!)

I guess the upside of today's commute is that if the kids ask "how do you get to work in Johannesburg?", the answer will be more adventurous than they expected.

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