Money Business

Our flight to Johannesburg was uneventful. We arrived this morning around 7:00 and easily made our way through immigration and customs. We barely managed to catch our free ride with the hostel bus, which left at 8:00. The hotel we booked into, the Backpacker Ritz, is north of central Johannesburg in a nice suburb. We had a shower and paid for our safari through the hotel's travel agent. We knew we needed US dollars to pay for part of the safari, since the company has to pay for certain things in US dollars. So, we proceeded to spend the entire remainder of the day trying to obtain these precious greenbacks. Had we known this would prove to be nearly impossible, we would have obtained the cash a few hours ago in Hong Kong.

We walked up the street to a shopping mall, all the while realising that Johannesburg is just like any city in the US or Oz. We had delcious salads for lunch, huge plates full of crisp, fresh lettuce and veggies. We then went to a bank to withdraw South African rand and then convert it into US dollars. We told the clerk our intentions and he seemed fine with it. So, with about 13,000 Rand in cash, we went to the bank's foreign exchange window, only to learn that you cannot 'buy' US dollars in South Africa. The guy tried to explain this convoluted law to us, but by the time he finished, we were so frustrated that we didn't really listen. Basically, because of the country's tight currency control, you cannot obtain strong currencies inside the country with their own currency. To make a long story short, nearly 7 hours and at least 6 different banks later, we finally managed to change some the rand into dollars. Apparently all we needed was our receipts showing we obtained the cash from a foreign account and all was dandy. But we wiped them out of US dollars and still had nearly half of our rand left. We attempted to go to another one of their branches, but it was closed by the time we got there. A few banks later, we did exchange the remainder of our cash into dollars at an American Express booth, after proving to the guy that we had already exchanged some of it at a bank. It was an extremely frustrating day, mainly because we could have very easily gotten the cash when we were in Hong Kong (we didn't think it would be a problem in Johannesburg, so decided not to carry it all with us on the plane). The safari company gave us no indication that it's nearly impossible to get US dollars within South Africa, but made damn sure you know you have to pay them with US dollars.

During this whole circus, we had to change our airline tickets out of Johannesburg. Luckily enough, the British Airways office was near one of the malls where we were visiting all of these banks. After a bit of confusion about our flights, the extremely helpful and friendly staff at BA changed our flights, no problems, and we left the tickets in their care to be reissued while we were on safari. It was here that we saw some of Johannesburgs finest security. Each visitor had to be signed in and there were security guards around in blue camo (very subtle), bullet proof vests, with machine guns, pistols, mace etc. They looked like they were straight out of a hollywood blockbuster.

By the time evening rolled around, we were exhausted. We stopped at the liquor store on the way back to the hotel to pick up a few beers, which we enjoyed during the pre-departure meeting for our trip. It was at the hotel, so we didn't have to go anywhere. We met our trip leader, Toni, and a few of the 15 other people. We found out what we'd be doing for the next few weeks, and were so excited we could barely contain ourselves. We were in such good moods that we laughed instead of cried when we found out that our first stop for the night would require us to have South African rand to pay for a few things...after all of that, we'd need to change some of our US dollars BACK into rand. We enjoyed a late pasta dinner at the restaurant down the street from the hotel, talking excitedly about all of the things we were to see over the next few weeks.