3. Check in with your bank.
You’ll want to call your bank to avoid any fraud alert freezes on your account while you swipe away in different cities and countries, but also should ask about their exchange rates. My bank, as it turned out, had a relationship with a South African bank to save its customers exchange charges. So, it was actually cheaper to take local money out of my American bank account using the ATMs in South Africa than to come with cash and exchange it over. I missed that memo and ended up spending more money than I needed to.
4. Break in your new shoes.
New shoes can be uncomfortable, even if you’ve had a similar pair before. Break in new shoes — even flats and sneakers — before you take off. You’ll likely do a lot more walking than you would do on a normal day and it’s not much you can do about it if they start to hurt your feet while you’re there. Unless you can run into a store and buy new ones, you’ll be stuck in an uncomfortable situation.
5. Learn the language.
There’s nothing more pretentious than assuming that everyone in the country you’re headed to will speak English. Sure, it’s likely, especially if you’ll be staying mostly on a resort, but if English is not of the country’s official languages, you should make an effort to learn at least a few phrases to show that you made an effort.
We didn’t really do this. South Africa has 11 official languages, and English just happens to be one of them. But still, as we traveled throughout the country, people spoke different indigenous languages to us. This makes sense: 23 percent of South Africans speak Zulu at home, 16 percent speak Xhosa, 14 percent speak Afrikaans, and less than 10 percent speak English. How beautiful it would have been to have known some phrases!