Petrol Prices

Okay, so with the rising costs of petrol, and everyone back in the States complaining about how much gasoline costs (between $4.00 and $4.50 per gallon), I started to wonder, what exactly do we pay here? Obviously, I know that petrol is R10-50 per litre, but what does that translate to in US Dollars? I began to do the math:

4 litres is approximately one gallon (1.05 gallons, to be exact). So... mulitply R10-50 by four, and you get R42 per gallon. The current exchange rate is 7.22 Rand to one Dollar, so that works out to $5.79 per gallon. YIKES!

This makes my getting lost last week on the way home from choir practice all the more disconcerting, considering how much petrol I wasted by ending up on the opposite side of town (let alone how on earth I got lost?!). I could tell you what suburb I left, where I ended up, and where I was supposed to be, but suffice it to say (for those of you in California) it was the equivalent of driving from Modesto to Salida, and ending up in Turlock.