Travel to South Africa

The power adapter that comes with your MBP (and most cell phone and camera battery chargers - check the small text on the charger itself) can accept input voltages from 100-240V and 50 or 60 Hz. South Africa is 230 V AC, so for those items all you will need is a plug adapter to fit your plug into those outlets - available from Radio Shack, or any mall-type travel store. Note that Apple's World Travel Adapter Kit may not include a 'type M' adapter, which is used in Mozambique, South Africa, and Swaziland (and has been mostly phased out in Hong Kong; Hong Kong is listed as a supported country in the Apple description, so if you are going to go that route you may want to call Apple to check).

For things that plug directly into the wall without a power brick/adapter of some sort, you would need a step-down transformer - again, visit the travel store for that.

As for unreliable power, there's not much you can do if it just goes out (which happened occasionally to me in East Africa). In terms of "dirty" power, the AC-to-DC conversion carried out by the power brick filters that pretty well. You can buy a surge suppressor ('power strip') once you get there, or bring one.

Happy travels!

Some sort of travel adaptor that'll allow you to plug yourself in is all you need; it's probably also worth getting a surge protector -- if you take a powerstrip with you and plug that into the travel adaptor you should be fine.

As someone who lives in SA the power issues are realy not that bad, there are hardly ever any power spikes / surges and if there are its nothing your power adapter will not be able to handle. we do have the odd power failure but unless you are in a seriously rural area you should have no problems at all.

If you are in any of the Major Centers Johannesburg Cape Town or Durban as well as some of the smaller towns there are Apple retailers around in case you need to change your power plug but any major super market will have international travel adapters to that you can plug your power plug into one of our sockets. We mainly use a 3 Pin 15 Amp plug here @ 220V 50Hz the standard power adapter handles this just fine in fact it will go up to 240V


If you have any other questions feel free to ask me

P.S. I have a spare 2 Pin adapter for SA that connects into the Apple Power Adapter.

Message was edited by: Lyndon Labuschagne