South Africans are kings at taking the long road November 27, 2006
Posted by Chris Oosthuizen in Trivia.trackback
As South Africans we probably drive the greatest distances to get to our holiday destinations of all societies in the world. I challenge anybody to prove me wrong.
The biggest part of the population lives in Gauteng in Johannesburg and Pretoria. The thing is when summer comes and its time to let your hair down there is not a lot on the menu to do.
The whole of Gauteng turns into a ghost town. If I had to rate the most popular holiday destinations in South Africa it would either be at the coast or in the bush. I’ve tried to be objective in choosing the most popular holiday destinations in SA in the table below.
| Average holiday destination in South Africa | Percentage visited | Distance |
| Cape region (Cape Town) | 35% | 1463km |
| Kwazulu Natal (Durban) | 35% | 656km |
| Limpopo (Kruger National Park – Skukuza) | 10% | 436km |
| Other | 20% | 450km |
| Average distance driven while on holiday | 1000km |
All distances where calculated from Pretoria as base.
Cape Town is a whopping 1463km from Pretoria. Most people take 2 days to make the trip down and then 2 days again on the way back. If we calculate the average distance travelled by car while on holiday it comes to a grand total of 2750.5km per family.
It’s fair to say that not all people drive around when on holiday so I’ll bring the grand total down by 750.5km to bring it to a nice and round 2000km exactly. What is the odds?
I know I’m certainly going to drive more this Christmas season. I’d say that there is a good 4000 (holiday) km waiting for me over the next 35 days.
So now that you’ve actually taken the time to read through this entire post I’ll attempt to try and add some value to your lives.
- If you want to calculate the distance between any two cities in South Africa this page will help you.
- If you want to convert kilometers to miles this page will help you.
Some personal trivia:
I’ve just surpassed the 80 000km mark on my odometer on my car. The earth’s circumfrance is 40 041.47km. So I’ve driven twice around the world in my trusty FIAT Palio.
I found your blog through flickr, and this was the first post I landed on.
I must, sadly, disagree with you!
As a child growing up in Pietermaritzburg, I thought the drive to JHB was interminable. However, now that I live in Texas, way out west in the desert, I realized how relatively small South Africa is. We live far, far away from everywhere, and 12-15 hour drives are not uncommon for us. I went to visit my brother in Colorado, and it took 17 hours, well over 600 miles…
And in college, we once drove from Arkansas to Las Vegas, which took about 54 hours in the car!
Thanks GKB – I appreciate your comment. I did this article with very little research and I posted it just for the sake of posting something. I realized distances are greater elsewhere I just asumed that that most people dont travel it by car as they do in RSA.
Have a good one