The Internet in South Africa is not as wide spread as in the US, which we hadn’t counted on. Much of the Internet services are pay as you go wifi hotspots. Many of the places we stay have given us a voucher good for 50MB of data, which most of the time can only be used within range of the main router (i.e. no internet within the rooms). This has worked out all right and when we need more data we can buy a voucher for up to 1GB of data. The 1GB of data goes pretty quick when trying to upload HD videos of our trip to Youtube. This is why we haven’t posted any videos in the last month. It also costs ~$10 for a 1GB voucher. We have had to compress most of our photos before posting them to save money, as photos also eat a lot of data. This means we’ll have a ton of eye-popping HD photos to show when we return.

Lately we have been travelling through northern KZN where it is pretty rural and Internet services are mostly through data plans on cell phones. We purchased a cell phone back Cape Town and have been using it for GPS, emails, and looking up stuff on the fly. However, out in Sodwana Bay, reception is pretty much nil.

We’ve booked two nights at the Protea Hotel (Marriott partners in ZA, yeah points for free nights) in Durban where we are hoping to get better wifi and go post, picture, and video crazy.

After dealing with the internet in South Africa, we’ve tempered our expectations a bit for Madagascar. We’ll have loads of videos, photos and posts to share when we return to the land of wifi and the good ole US of A.