Finding your way in South Africa is relatively easy, although public transport is for most difficult to understand and not necessarily reliable. In addition, public transport routes are rarely in the vicinity of the hiking areas. Driving by car is often the best way to find your way to the hiking trails.
South Africa - Hiking Trails in and Around Pretoria and Johannesburg includes easy to follow and detailed directions to each trail when addresses of the visitors' centers are not available. But did you know that you also can use your smartphone, tablet or car GPS to find the trail?
How it Works
Although most trails have a visitors' center with an address, you can also find the hiking trails using Google Maps or Bing Maps apps on your smartphone or tablet.
The trick is to use a GPS coordinate from the hiking guide as the destination in addition to an address or name of the reserve.
Using GPS Coordinates
Each trail description in the guidebook includes the GPS coordinate of the starting point of the trail. These can be used to print directions to the trail using the web.
Go to Google Maps or Bing Maps on the web or use the apps on your smartphone.
Type S25 52.646 E28 08.573 for example as your destination to find the starting point of the trail in the Bishop Bird Nature Area in Pretoria.
Most car GPS devices (TomTom, Garmin, etc) also allow you to enter a GPS coordinate.
Please note that the directions from Bing, Google or any other map provider may not necessarily correspond with the directions in the guidebook.
