Recently, I had the good fortune to spend a weekend at Founders Lodge (Mantis Colldection), a Wildlife reserve situated in the E Cape where I met several British travelers, many of which who had started their adventure here and then were planning to travel to Cape Town by car over 10 days or so.

As we enjoyed early morning coffee and rusks after an adventurous game drive, and they found out what I did, I was bombarded by questions on the safety of travel in SA, and the warnings they had been given by the UK Foreign Travel Advice Bureau. Some of the questions were quite naïve:

“Are there baboons on all your roads?”

“Is it safe to walk on the beaches in Plettenburg Bay?”

“Are there roadblocks at every wine estate?”

Some a bit more profound:

“Is it safe to walk around the Waterfront in Cape Town?”

“Would you advise visiting the Cape Point reserve?”

“How good are the roads in the Karoo?”

I was rather intrigued at the number of questions and asked one of the couples howcome they had so many?

“My 28 page UK Foreign Travel advice” she said as she produced a fairy weighty booklet she had downloaded and printed (attached here: READ MORE)

As I read through it two issues occurred to me:

Firstly, does this device fairly represent the challenges of travelling in South Africa?

Secondly, is this the kind of advice that the UK Foreign Bureau provides on travelling anywhere in the world?

I’ll leave you to make up your own mind!