Johannesburg guide + caution

My husband, Gerald Liedl, and I had a one-day layover in Johannesburg, South Africa, on March 19, 2017, and ended up arranging a private 4-hour tour of the city with The KFP Tours (P.O. Box 16426, Leondale, Germiston, 1424, South Africa; cell phone 27731616063, www.kfptours.co.za [under construction]). The tour was excellent.

The desk clerk at our hotel, the Peermont Metcourt (which we booked on Hotels.com), was the one who connected us with The KFP Tours. When we came down for breakfast, we asked the clerk if she could recommend a tour for that day. When we came out from breakfast, she said she had called a company she’d recommended to others and that a driver would be picking us up in an hour. (Apparently, Sundays in March aren’t busy.)

The combined cost of the tour for both of us was $140, which we charged to our credit card. That included having our driver/guide, Lebo Machaba, pick us up at the hotel (which was at the airport, a good distance from the city), accompany us into various buildings, answer our questions and give us interesting information about everything we saw.

Lebo has a degree in economics and a firm grasp of South African history. He took us into the beautiful new parliament building and past steam engines and other examples of South African history in a downtown park. He showed us remains of prisons from the apartheid era, ending at Soweto, where we toured Nelson Mandela’s house.

On a bad note, theft seems rife at the Johannesburg airport. My sandals were stolen out of my checked luggage by, apparently, some handler, and a woman in a boarding line with me said her husband’s shaver had been stolen from a bag that had a TSA lock on it.

My advice to flyers traveling to Johannesburg is to pack only used clothing in checked luggage and to keep anything new or valuable in your carry-on.

EMILEE HINES CANTIERI
Hendersonville, NC