JOHANNESBURG is the heartland of South Africa. It is the country's the economic and cultural centre, a vibrant location for both business and holiday visitors - and of course, football fans.  With the slogan "a world class African city" Johannesburg works: the phones dial, the lights switch on, you can drink the water, there are multi-lane freeways, skyscrapers, conference centres, golf courses.

Should you get lost, ordinary people on the street speak English. Cellphones are everywhere. You can send e-mail from your hotel room, you can bank any foreign currency, you can watch international TV stations, and should you fall ill, the hospitals have world-class equipment and doctors who can be trusted with a scalpel.

Tips for tourists
Johannesburg is South Africa's most cosmopolitan city, home to diverse population groups and to languages from throughout Africa. South Africa itself has 11 languages, all of them spoken in Johannesburg.

But tourists will find that English is the predominant language of government, business and the media, and can be understood by most people.

Arriving in a strange place can be quite intimidating and confusing, so here is a range of advice from arriving at the airport to driving on the city's freeways, from where to get medical help to exchanging currency.

Sights and sounds
For the visitor the difficulty lies not in finding something to do , but in choosing between all the exciting options. There's something for everyone - museums that examine the country's apartheid past, the city's exciting new Constitutional Court, a look at the city's gold mining beginnings, traditional African medicine or muti, and plenty of animals and outdoor fun.

Relax and enjoy yourself, Johannesburg style.

Transport
Johannesburg's municipal area is BIG.

It is often compared with Los Angeles, with which it shares a similar sprawling topography, linked by huge highway interchanges. Los Angeles covers more area, but it's a patchwork of independent local governments. Johannesburg is a single municipality that covers over 1 645km². Sydney's central municipality, by comparison, covers 1 500km².

What does this mean for tourists? Because there are no mountains or estuaries to block growth, the city is a shapeless sprawl in which places of interest are often widely separated. A ring of highways provides some easily accessible points of reference for out-of-towners.

The dominant forms of transport are the private car and the minibus taxi. Some 49 percent of road trips are made by private cars, 29 percent by taxis, 13 percent by buses.

This, however, is set to change with the introduction of the City's Bus Rapid Transit system.

Accommodation
Johannesburg is blessed with a wide range of quality hotels . Many belong to international hotel chains that are likely to be familiar to tourists, but even those that are locally owned can match international standards.

Johannesburg's affluent northern suburbs, Sandton and Rosebank in particular, are geared towards tourists, and most of the better hotels are in those areas, close to shopping complexes, restaurants, convention centres and golf courses.

For those who need to stay in other areas, countless guesthouses provide comfortable yet inexpensive accommodation. Many good bed and breakfast guesthouses are family-run cottages in the gardens of suburban homes - try them for an experience of South African hospitality. 

<< Back to 2010 Fifa World Cup™