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You’ve heard that South Africa is a little bit third-world and a little bit first-world, but did you know that the banking system is more sophisticated than just about anything in the world? True story.

Don’t worry about bringing cash of any kind. Your dollars and euros are worthless: nobody will accept them outside of the airport duty-free zones. Four-star hotels (and up) as well as all banks and fairly common change bureaux will change your cash into rands for you, but they will universally slaughter you with fees and rates. Do not, whatever you do, engage in back market or on-the-street money changing. It is illegal and there is no way that your new “friend” can beat the bank rates, so you are being scammed and probably robbed into the bargain. Travellers cheques are fine and can be widely changed. But by far the best is the humble credit card.

Anyone who wants to sell you anything will accept a credit card from Visa or Master Card, and most will take American Express and Diners Club too. Restaurants, cafes, hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, guest houses, liquor stores, clubs and strip joints. There are only two exceptions: petrol stations and roadside vendors (including informal sellers of curios and the like). Petrol stations because they aren’t by law allowed to accept credit card payment for fuel (which is a quirk of the fixed-price retail petrol system) and vendors because their volumes don’t justify the expense.

There is a simple solution to those problems too. Automatic teller machines (ATMs) are pervasive; no town is too small to have one. You’ll find them in malls, at petrol stations, inside hotels and shops. In deep rural areas you’ll find mini-terminals inside general dealer stores, which use a system whereby you are paid your cash from the cash register on presentation of a transaction slip.

There are occasional problems with card-skimming, where credit cards are cloned and then misused, a form of identity theft, basically. The incident rate is pretty low, but it’s worth watching your card just to be on the safe side. Any good restaurant will bring a portable card reader to your table rather than walk away with your card, and no retailer should need to take it out of your sight for any reason.

So one good credit card should meet all your requirements, just make sure it doesn’t run out of money while you are here.

They are like lit oases in an ocean of darkness at night, and often like frantically buzzing beehives during the day. They are the 24-hour garage shops, and they are your friends.

Here in South Africa we have a peculiar overpopulation of petrol stations (for the Brits, that would be “service station”; for the Yanks, we’re talking about “gas stations”.) It’s a long and somewhat complicated story, but basically the formula used to regulate the petrol price makes it very profitable for oil companies to invest in fixed assets. Such as land and buildings. Which is why they have dotted the landscape with two to three times as many petrol stations as South Africa could conceivably need.

Due to some other quirks in the legislation and regulation, almost every petrol station is open for business 24 hours a day, and almost every single one has a shop attached to it. And in this case “shop” is shorthand for “emporium of delights so rich and varied that it boggles the mind.”

Even the most beggarly of these shops will sell you an ice cold Coca-Cola, a selection of chocolate bars and ice creams, packets of instant soup, wiper blades and a box of condoms to get you through those lonely nights. Hey, we’re not here to judge your preferences, just to inform.

But an overwhelming majority also have advanced bachelor support systems that range from in-house bakeries to full-service fast-food outlets. In the cities you’ll also easily find one co-branded with the Woolworths retail chain, where you’ll find premium pre-prepared microwave meals, fresh fruit and vegetables and fresh custard. Any of these will also boast an automatic teller machine (ATM), so a shortage of cash won’t even be a valid excuse. Harder to find (but more exciting still) are the ones that integrate high-end coffee franchises, where a trained barista will grind your beans fresh. No kidding.

In the cities these little slices of paradise are thick as flies on a dog turd, but if a town is big enough to appear on a map you’ll find a 24-hour garage in it. Oh, and they are also common in the absolute middle of nowhere, if you are driving along a major highway.

If you hail from a third world country (like anywhere in Europe) we know you’ll find it hard to believe. But when you run out of triple-A batteries at three in the morning, or absolutely must have ribbed-for-her-pleasure consumables, just step outside and look for a brightly lit forecourt. The petrol station will provide.