Hire Cars

I remember when you could pretty much take a hire car - and a company car too - anywhere with little or no consequence. However, nowadays you almost sign your life away every time you pick up a vehicle.

When we arrived in Durban we collected our Toyota Corolla - noting that it had been around the block a bit from the variety of marks and scratches recorded on the checkout sheet - and headed for Salt Rock. Within a couple of miles Linda noticed that her handbag was wet and that the mat in the well on the passenger side was saturated.

Left it to dry overnight but discovered it was unchanged in the morning and happy enough when the hire company offered to send out a replacement car that afternoon. This was an almost brand new Toyota but one size down from the Corolla.  Figured it would probably be OK since they had nothing else to offer even though it was a little bit basic.

We found that it was a bit under-powered but had got used to it after driving nearly 1200km in the last couple of weeks. However after the amount of dirt track driving that we managed in the Game parks I was a little concerned about the red dust that not only covered the whole car - streaked by the occasional rain shower - but had also seeped into every crevice and coated almost every surface.

Thankfully when we arrived at the Concierge yesterday one of the staff volunteered to clean the car for me for a very small fee  and a slightly larger tip, and did an excellent job - the car looks better than when we picked up. Lets hope the hire company feel the same!