Visa's and stuff

So before my adventure begins, I have had to do a bit of prep work. Its all new to me, since this will be my first overseas trip. Since I am doing Camp America through a agency, most of the complications have been sorted out, but there were a few minor set backs. I arranged my flight through a friend at Flight Centre, going from Cape Town to Providence via Heathrow and Washington respectively, and then coming back from New York via Heathrow and Joburg. I was then chatting to a friend who mentioned I might need a transit visa for the UK, so I chatted to my travel agent friend and she said that this was not the case. She also chatted to her supervisor, who confirmed this. So I was happy that I didn't need a transit visa for the UK. However, when I forwarded my literary to the agency that was organising my travel insurance, they checked with the travel agency they are associated with, who then came back to me and said I DID need a transit visa. With having had 2 different opinions on this matter, I was beginning to panic!

So I decided to take matters into my own hand so to speak, and do a bit of research of my own. So I looked up UK transit visa, UK visa, South Africa to USA travel via Heathrow and a bunch of other subjects, and came up with a bunch of information, but nothing that said I had to/didn't have to get a visa, so I thought "why don't I just phone BAA, as Britain's main airline, surely they will know" but they didn't, and the British embassy also seemed clueless. I got given the number for visa applications, which has a whole bunch of info in the various prompts, but basically they all point back to the web site, and you don't get to speak to an operator.

In the end, I decided to err on the side of caution, and decided to apply for one, only to find that the division that  deals with transit visas does actually have an option to speak to an operator, and he said that if I am going to be staying in the airport, and provided I have a ticket out of the UK within 24 hours, I didn't need a transit visa. Needless to say I was suitably relieved, since I'd have been cutting it close, trying to get a UK visa in 8 working days...