Mention to friends and family that you are off to South Africa for a holiday and chances are they will start to look worried. Many will have seen the violence in townships earlier this year on their TV screens or have heard about people being shot at point blank range in city centres and think you won’t even survive the taxi journey from the airport to your hotel.

I am not going to try to claim that bad things aren’t happening in South Africa (because they are), but having returned from a 10 day trip, I can confirm that it doesn’t feel like a country at war. I felt safe enjoying the many attractions of Johannesburg, like its excellent museums presenting a thoughtful overview of the country’s recent history (you’ll hear more about this in the series of blogs that I launched at Pastinpresent.net yesterday). And there are plenty of areas where it is possible to socialise with friends (like Maboneng, which I thought seemed like an area of Shoreditch).

As part of my trip, I drove from Durban to the heart of KwaZulu-Natal, home of battlefields like Rorke’s Drift where the British fought Zulus (I’ll be covering in detail in a Pastinthepresent.net blog) and found some of the roads we used were certainly better than British ones.

People working in hotels along the way (and the lodge where we stayed when visiting the battlefields) were extremely friendly. They seemed to take pride in their jobs; if anyone was having an off day, they didn’t show it. The South Africans we met – from people working in restaurants to those manning stops of open top tour buses – were positive about the country (despite its many challenges) and wanted to make sure we were having a good time.

I don’t think I’ve been to a country where I’ve had so much tasty food during a single holiday. Every meal served up (particularly the sirloin steaks) was pretty much faultless. And just to be clear, we didn’t spend all our time eating in luxury hotels where that should have been expected – even quick bites in shopping malls were fantastic.

South Africa is a country that can be enjoyed by tourists. While it’s cities have no-go areas (especially at night), that shouldn’t put you off visiting the country as a whole. There are plenty of spots where you can go and have a pleasant time, you just need to take precautions and speak to locals to understand where it is safe to go.