After getting situated with the internet, we set off to find an African crafts market. We succeeded in finding one after asking no fewer than 3 people for directions, and paid the R2 fee to get inside (it’s basically 30 cents). For the most part, it was like any one of the Mexican Mega Malls that are found in Chicago, with lots of cheap crap for sale that wasn’t distinctly African in any way. They were even selling video game systems that looked like bootleg old-school Nintendos. The original Nintendo is 25 years old. The fact that they were selling it for more than $5 is remarkable in itself. There were a couple of African craft stores which sold some interesting items, and we picked out what we wanted before heading out. In the same market area, there was some sort of wedding show going on, consisting of young girls parading around in wedding dresses and one guy who would sing in between the girls. He was just awful. There was a sizeable crowd, and I can only hope that the people in attendance were the parents of the girls in it.

From there we went to Freedom Park, which was built in Pretoria as a symbol of the unification of South Africa following the Apartheid regime. It is a modern memorial venue, so it features many abstract manifestations of important events. We were lucky to make it in as one of the last tour groups of the day, and were taken up to the top where the tour began. I should mention that the venue is high above the city of Pretoria, and provides a fantastic view of the city. We learned that construction started on the center in 2003, and 7 years later, there is still a lot that they are building. South Africans take the unification concept extremely seriously, as it is still very fresh in their minds. Every adult in South Africa lived through the unification of the country, so it is like the US would have been following the Civil War. There is a memorial that was built by the Afrikaaners to commemorate their victory over the Zulu people in the 1940s, and as a symbol of being conciliatory and unified, it was mandated that while on Freedom Park, you can see both that memorial as well as the Union Buildings of Pretoria, where the official business of the country takes place. Our tour guide mentioned that from where the President sits, he can see Freedom Park and the Afrikaaner memorial.

We walked past the Wall of Names of every South African that had died in any conflict that is officially recognized by the country, although they have yet to engrave every name in the stones. There is an eternal flame that burns for the victims of these conflicts, as well as a symbolic final resting place commemorated by stones from every province in the country set in a circle. Along with providing phenomenal vista views of Pretoria, Freedom Park is a very tasteful and well-done memorial to all of South Africa, and one that is growing by the day. Hopefully I can return some day when it is fully finished.

After Freedom Park, we headed to the train station to determine if it was feasible to take the train to our match in Jo’burg tomorrow night between Brazil and the Ivory Coast. It was not. I think we will be hitting the casino tomorrow, which conveniently is right next to a Park-n-Ride for the stadium that we will attempt to take advantage of. We drove past Hatfield Square on the way home, which was very similar to the place we were last night in Jo’burg. Seeing as how we were all cold last night and half of us are under the weather, we decided not to go there tonight and instead went out to a restaurant where we watched the game in a more suitable climate. Unfortunately, we didn’t know that the match was being played in Pretoria tonight, and we probably could’ve gone and gotten tickets. Oh well. It was a great match, although I was pulling for Cameroon, who just didn’t have the talent to finish, and Denmark took the match 2-1.

Tomorrow is match 3 of 4, and we’ll all be attempting to make some money back at the casino beforehand. Hard to believe we’ve only been on this trip for a week. It feels like we’ve been here for 3.

written by  nucappy on June 19, 2010 from Pretoria, South Africa
from the travel blog: London and South Africa - World Cup 2010!
tagged SouthAfrica, Pretoria and WorldCup
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Now, for the second thing that really grinds my gears – the Italian National Team. If you watched the New Zealand-Italy match today, you should understand why. The team is a disgrace to the sport and is a big reason why lots of people choose not to watch it. It amazes me that after years and years of the same flopping nonsense, the referees continue to reward them for doing it – in this instance, with a game-changing penalty that robbed the Kiwis of 2 more points and kept Italy in good standing within the group. How ludicrous was it? The New Zealand player who had a grip on the Italian player’s shirt was tugging him backwards and the Italian somehow managed to fall forwards. Unbelievable. Pretty much everybody in the casino was rooting for New Zealand, as it was being shown on TV screens all around the place.

At the conclusion of that match, it was time for us to leave the casino and take advantage of their very cheap parking so that we could hop a Park-n-Ride bus to our match – Brazil v. Ivory Coast. This match was being played at Soccer City, the largest venue in the World Cup, and quite possibly the largest venue since the US hosted in 1994 (not entirely certain about that). As the bus approached the stadium, it was tough not to gasp in awe. The stadium is beautiful. If, somehow, you haven’t seen a picture or video of it, the stadium was designed to look like traditional African pottery from the outside. This look is achieved using thousands of pieces of differently painted wood along with gaps throughout the structure to allow light from the stadium to stream out. It is not the tallest stadium from the outside, but that’s because it is sunk into the ground quite a bit. As we got off the bus, the atmosphere was buzzing with palpable excitement and anticipation. This was easily going to be the largest crowd of the 3 matches we’ve been to thus far, and with the place full of raucous Brazil supporters, I was ready to have a good time.

This was the first time where security was actually being effective at any of the matches we’ve been to, making people open their bags and take items out of their pockets. At the last 2 matches, we went through metal detectors, they beeped, and no one said a word. Once we finally made it through that checkpoint, we had to make our way around the massive stadium to get to the side where our ramp up to our seats was located. When we were looking on the seat map to see where we were sitting, it was disappointing; as it appeared that we had some pretty terrible seats high up in the corner. It took roughly 20 minutes for us to reach our location, going up the series of ramps that were very nicely hidden inside the “pottery” exterior until we finally got to the top. Once we were actually in our seats though, they turned out to be quite alright.

As massive as the stadium looked from the outside, it was nothing compared to what it looked like once we got to our seats. A sea of people – up, down, left, right, across, below – waves of yellow and green and orange. Horns blaring, flags waving, songs being sung – a true party scene. We had a great view of the close goal from our corner, although being up so high made it difficult to gauge the height of balls kicked in the air. After going to two matches that were not very full at all, this one was very, very full. Announced attendance was just under 85,000, making it the 4th largest sporting event I’ve ever attended as far as I can remember. The Brazilian fans far outnumbered the fans of Cote D’Ivoire, at least in appearance, with only small scattered pockets of orange able to be seen from our vantage point.

The starting line-ups were announced, with the largest cheers going to Kaka, Robinho and Didier Drogba that were to the point of almost deafening. The match itself started out fairly pedestrian. Both teams seemed to be feeling each other out, but nothing much was happening. The vuvuzelas started going into a “pulse” mode while the action lagged, and eventually a section of Brazilian fans started a coordinated cheer. Since the stadium was so large, it was difficult for the cheer to spread outside the section or filter down to the field level. In the 25th minute, Brazil struck with an unbelievable goal as Kaka showed why he is a world-class player getting the ball through a couple defenders and on to the foot of Luis Fabiano who made no mistake about slotting it home. 1-0 Brazil, and that’s how it remained through halftime.

The 2nd half brought one of the greatest goals I will probably ever witness in person in my life. Cote D’Ivoire was struggling to put any threat together for the beginning part of the half, and shortly thereafter Brazil put an end to any thought of a comeback courtesy of Luis Fabiano’s feet and concentration. I wish I had gotten my camera out in time to record the goal itself, but instead I, along with the rest of the crowd, could only stare in amazement as he popped the ball up over an opponent once, twice, and a third time to his left foot where he calmly powered it past the keeper to the delirious delight of everyone in attendance. While the replay showed he may have handled it with his right arm in order to bring it back down to himself, the goal was so incredible that to call it off for that would almost have been a disservice to those watching.

Following this, the crowd was clearly pulling for Cote d’Ivoire to do something, anything, to get back in the game and make it close and exciting. With this not happening, the crowd started a wave to generate some noise in the stadium. Normally, I hate the wave, as it distracts from watching the match and is completely overdone. This time, with 85,000 people in full roar, it was enjoyable. Shortly after it died down following a few full revolutions, Brazil put the match completely out of reach with a goal off of a perfect cross from Kaka to the foot of Elano who beat his defender to the ball. By the time Drogba headed one down into the net to make it 3-1, there was hardly any time left and virtually no chance of a comeback. As we started to leave to try and beat the crowd back to the busses, the remaining spectators started buzzing excitedly and we saw on the TV that Kaka had gotten red-carded for knocking a player down. Big news, since they play Portugal next and he won’t be available.

We got on the bus to head back to the casino to pick up our car to drive back to Pretoria, and the whole process took about an hour and a half or so. Not too terrible. Tomorrow we drop the car off and fly to Cape Town for the last leg of our adventure.

written by  nucappy on June 20, 2010 from Pretoria, South Africa
from the travel blog: London and South Africa - World Cup 2010!
tagged SouthAfrica, Brazil and IvoryCoast
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The flight itself was only half-full and uneventful, which was much better than our flight from London that took off in vicious cross-winds. The Cape Town airport was nice and fast getting our luggage to us and we were soon on our way to the hotel via taxi.

It was unfortunately raining pretty hard on the drive, so we weren't able to fully appreciate the majesty of the view as we went into the city. We are staying in an area called Gardens, which is nestled right in the crease of Table Mountain. It's only 3km to the stadium, and about half that to the downtown area. From what we've been told, it's extremely safe to walk around in, even at night.

We hung out for the afternoon and watched the referee take over the Chile-Switzerland match, handing out cards like they were going out of style, and as the match ended, the weather cleared up. We can see Table Mountain from our bathroom window - it's that close. As we made our way down to dinner at an Vietnamese restaurant called Saigon that was recommended to us by our driver from the airport, the proximity of the mountain to us was absolutely stunning. I can't wait to get up there on Wednesday. as for the restaurant, that recommendation turned out to be a great idea.

After dinner we bought a few snack items and dropped them off at the hotel before heading around the corner to Rick's American Cafe (yes, like Casablanca) to watch the Spain-Honduras match. I was hoping Honduras would win and complete the Spanish collapse, but they just couldn't match their firepower.

Yes, today was a bit low-key compared to some past days, but tomorrow we start right up again with a trip to the Cape of Good Hope followed by a tour of Stellenbosch in wine country. Once that ends, it's football, football, football. Bafana Bafana is hoping for a miracle while Mexico attempts to win its group. Should be a great day!

written by  nucappy on June 21, 2010 from Cape Town, South Africa
from the travel blog: London and South Africa - World Cup 2010!
tagged SouthAfrica and CapeTown
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We were met promptly at 9:30am by a man named Grant who was going to be our driver/tour guide today. When I was trying to plan out where to stay in Cape Town, I had an idea of the neighborhoods and landscape from Google Maps, but I was completely taken by surprise when we actually arrived in the city to find that the scale of the city is much smaller than I had assumed, and the mountains are much more prevalent than I had thought. Our drive down to the Cape of Good Hope showed us this, as we drove through a lot of hilly areas when I thought it was all going to be low-lying.

The drive down the coast was absolutely gorgeous. Very similar to the Pacific Coast Highway of California. Winding roads, an ocean on the west side, mountains, beautiful landscapes - it had it all. It took about an hour to get down to the park, and as we got closer, we passed a German ostrich farm. We weren't able to stop and get pictures, but there were many, many ostriches hanging out in fenced-in areas. Very ugly birds. As we continued on, we started to see warning signs about baboons. Apparently baboons have learned how to open car doors, and will steal things from people if the doors are unlocked or the windows are open. As we pulled in to Cape Point, we saw one such baboon with a baby right next to the path up the hill. After it bounded away, we made our ascent to the top.

The view is absolutely breathtaking. You can see both oceans from the top, along with the suburbs of Cape Town and the other nearby mountains. I've taken some panorama shots and a video or 3 to try and capture the feel, which will get posted later. It was a nice hike to the top, and we hadn't had any real physical activity like this since our days in London, so it was great to use the legs again. After we descended, we waited for the same baboon to move away from the car (but not before getting great pictures), and then we went over to the Cape of Good Hope for the photo op. It's much lower than the other peak, so there was no need to go up it.

Leaving the Cape park, we passed some more baboons and ostriches on the side of the road that people were getting quite close to for pictures. One such car had their doors open next to some baby baboons, and I was just waiting for an adult to jump in and terrorize them. I might be a horrible person. Our next stop was a place called Simon's Town, home of penguins. Known informally as the Jackass Penguin because of its braying noises that they make, we got to get pretty close to a couple of the little guys. So that's 3 new animals we've seen today to add to the litany that we saw on the safari.

As it was getting quite late in the afternoon and we really wanted to get back by 4pm to watch the South Africa and Mexico matches, we just grabbed lunch at, what else, McDonalds, and drove off to Stellenbosch. We made it to the Warwick winery and had a tasting of 6 of their wines. 2 whites - a sauvignon blanc and a chardonnay, and 4 reds - a cabernet sauvignon, a pinotage (South African specialty), and 2 blended wines. All were quite tasty, and as we tasted the last glass, the person who was taking care of us told us we were going to go on a wine "safari". We took our glasses into a Land Rover that was similar to our safari vehicle, and went up the hill into their farm area. Once again, the view was just phenomenal. We learned a bit about the winery's history, as well as which grapes grew on what vines and all the different conditions required to make each wine. We finished off our last taste and headed down the hill to go on home.

We missed the first half of the matches on tv, but were able to get the radio feed on the drive home. Listening to soccer on the radio is quite confusing, especially considering that they were flipping back and forth between the two games without much notice. South Africa needed a combination of a 5-goal swing between them and Mexico, and as the first half ended, Mexico had given up 1 and South Africa had scored 2. It was quite exciting in the car, and as we got home, we rushed up to catch the 2nd half of the matches. Unfortunately, Mexico didn't give up any more goals and South Africa allowed France to score 1, so their time at the World Cup came to an abrupt end. They should be proud though, for beating France if nothing else.

We hopped over to a rich area called Camps Bay to get some seafood, at a restaurant called the Codfather. Yes, it's a horrible pun, but the food was fantastic. They have no menu there. There is a choice of appetizers, and then you are taken over to the display case to select which cut of fish you want. There were roughly 6 or 7 different fishes to choose from, and you are able to tell them how much of it you want to eat. Then they cut it, weigh it, and tell you the cost. They also had 2 different types of prawns, and we got a couple of each. The fish comes grilled, and is served with 4 different sauces - lemon butter with garlic, sweet apricot, lemon butter with no garlic, and chili sauce. All were great, although the chili sauce was freakin' HOT! And I like spicy things, too!

Following dinner, we thought about going to the bar next door to watch, but it was crowded and they were charging cover to get in. Instead, we headed back to the hotel to watch the night games, which were pretty boring.

Tomorrow is a day of high adventure with mountain biking and rappelling down the mountain to follow before we watch the US take on Algeria for the right to move to the Round of 16!

written by  nucappy on June 22, 2010 from Cape Town, South Africa
from the travel blog: London and South Africa - World Cup 2010!
tagged SouthAfrica, CapeTown and WorldCup
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After breakfast, we made our way down to the offices of Downhill Adventures, the group that was leading our trip for the day. We showed up at 9am ready to go, but as we've discovered, South Africans have a different concept of time. We waited around in the office for them to get ready, and didn't make it up to the mountain until close to 10am. The mountain, mind you, is about 3 km away.

Once we got up to the cable car base station, the bikes were unloaded and we hopped on them to practice and make sure that everyone was comfortable with shifting gears and peddling on them. Since this was a tour for beginners, it was understandable that they'd want to do this. The bikes were click-shifters, and seeing as how I ride my bike at home all the time, I figured this would be easy and I was ready to go. The girls got their bearings on their bikes and it was time for the four of us plus our four guides to go on a practice run.

We began the trail, and it was pretty damn steep. Now, in the brochure, it said that the biking was going to be 10% uphill, 90% downhill. According to the guides, it was going to be roughly 30% uphill, 70% downhill. According to reality, it was closer to even. That aside, within the first 10 minutes of going downhill down the trail, I squeezed my front brake a bit too hard and pitched myself right over the handlebars. Way to go, Mr. Experienced Bike Rider. I only got a small cut on my right hand, and the skin was still mostly covering it, so I cleaned it as best I could and soldiered on. I had taken a couple puffs from my asthma inhaler before starting, and needed a couple more before we'd even gone halfway on the so-called practice run, as we were going up at a ridiculously steep climb, and, not having mountains in Chicago, I was not properly in shape for such an endeavor.

After walking up most of the uphill back towards the cable car base station and riding very slowly up the other part, we were able to take a quick rest to catch our breath again. It wasn't easy though, because there were so many cars passing through the area and the car exhaust fumes were seriously not helping me out at all. Once we finally got past that area, we were on the road going slightly uphill - much easier than what we had previously been doing. We were headed towards an area of Table Mountain called Devil's Peak. No one was really certain how it got its name, but by the end of the day, I would have my own theory.

At a certain point, the road became closed to cars due to rockslides, but we rode on up it anyway until we got to a point where the road ended, and another trail began. The views of the city were absolutely beautiful, as the mountains totally surround the city, and we got our first views of the stadium, though it was still a bit foggy and I wasn't able to get great shots from up high. At noon, a canon goes off from Signal Hill, which is the northern-most peak of the range, and it went off just before we were about to start down the trail. We could see the smoke rising from where it fired, and at that point, it was time to continue onward.

I felt pretty good starting down the trail, as it was fairly straight, not too steep, and I was getting a better handle on the brakes. Naturally, I spun out almost instantly and slipped down, but no damage there. We continued on for a bit, going over some bumps and struggling to maintain control of the speed, but everything was going well and it was fairly exhilarating. We stopped at one point to let everyone catch up, and then continued on down the hill. At this point, things got dicey.

We were on a part of the trail that was more rocks than dirt, and the bike tends to slip a bit while braking. I had been behind Sara and decided that I wanted to get out in front of her to be able to go at my own speed. Let's remember that this was on a downhill portion of a slippery slope that was difficult to brake on. As I passed her, another one of those bumps came up that you're not supposed to brake on as you go over it, because if you do, when you come down, your bike stops suddenly. Naturally, I hit the brakes as I went over it. When I came down, my front wheel stuck in the trail like it was a javelin stuck into the ground, and I promptly flew right over the handlebars yet again and went face-first right into the rocks on the ground.

I got up to find that my pants were scuffed, my shirt sleeve was torn at the hand, my right hand, which previously only had 1 cut, now had about 4 big ones and 6 or so other small ones. My left hand had a small cut, and apparently my chin was bleeding. I got up, felt a bit woozy for about 5 seconds, took some water, and then the guide looked at my face and his expression went from a smile to a bit of horror. Apparently I had gashed my chin open nice and good, and he thought I needed to get some stitches. Seeing as how we were still on a mountain, there was only one way to get to a place that could stitch me up, and that was to ride downhill. Luckily one of the guides had some band-aids, and covered my chin up as best he could for the rest of the ride. Somehow, this is the kind of thing that would happen to me.

I managed to make it down the rest of the ride without incident, and went through town the rest of the way back to the office where we were going to eat lunch before the abseil. After some more workers inspected my chin, they all concurred that I needed stitches as well, so while Ryan, Rocio and Sara stayed behind to eat lunch, Martin, our lead guide, drove me up to the clinic to get fixed up. I was hoping to be able to make it back for the abseil, but I didn't want the others to miss out because of my inability to properly control my bike.

I was told to go to the emergency room, so I went over there and filled out the paperwork, then waited until they took me back. The nurse told me I needed to shave the area around the wound so that she could get to it better, and handed me a straight razor to do the job. Now, I use an electric razor at home. In fact, I've managed to never use a straight razor for shaving in my life. So now I figured, great, I'm going to mangle my chin even further while doing this. The nurse was very encouraging though, and I managed to clean everything off without further nicking myself. The razor, on the other hand, was nice and bloody, so that was just delightful.

While going back to the hospital bed, I noticed there was a pump sitting in the corner that looked familiar. Sure enough, it was a Baxter Colleague pump - the hospital is a Baxter hospital. I wasn't exactly certain what to think about that....but I didn't need to use the pump, so it was all ok. After telling my story to the nurse and the doctor, I was given some lidocaine and stitched up with 3 stitches to close up the wound. For my hands, they asked if I would be okay with them using something called Mercurochrome or "monkey blood". It can't be used in the States since it has a low amount of Mercury in it. I didn't care at this point, so I had them smear it on my hand. Now my hand is nice and bright red. They wouldn't take my insurance, but even though this was the emergency room of a private clinic, the total bill was just over $100. Brilliant.

Upon arriving back at the Downhill Adventures office with stitches firmly in chin, I was relieved to discover that the rest of the gang hadn’t left for abseiling yet, so I was still able to go with them. We climbed back in the van and went up to the base station, but this time, we were getting on the cable car and traveling up to the top of Table Mountain, roughly 1000 meters high (~3250 feet). As we ascended, the floor inside the car rotated around so we got great views of both the mountain and the city as we were lifted higher and higher until we got off at the top, where the wind was quite evident.

The guys at Abseil Africa were right there once we got outside the cable car station, and as I peered over the edge, I couldn’t quite see where we were going to be descending from. They explained that once we had our harnesses on, we would climb over the wall, attach ourselves to a safety rope, and make our way around to the actual point of descent. The instructor explained in great detail the safety features of the mechanism and how there was literally zero chance that we could do anything to hurt ourselves while climbing down. Even with all of the explanations and assurances, Rocio declined to go with the rest of us, even though she planned the activity herself. As a result, there were only 3 of us, and since they only run in pairs, one of us had to be the odd man out and go solo. That person was me. Granted, I volunteered to go solo, so it’s not like it was forced upon me or anything. For some reason, and I don’t know if it was due to the earlier biking incident that had my adrenaline pumping or not, but I wasn’t frightened, even though I was standing on a piece of rock that was roughly 2 feet wide at best, holding onto a rope attached to another rock, staring out into the abyss.

The abseil itself was 112 meters (~360 feet) and apparently only a 5 or 10 minute activity, depending on how fast the person went, so it wasn’t like I had to wait that long of a time to get hooked up to go, but it sure did feel like a long time. They asked me which rope I wanted to use, and I told them whichever one makes me have to walk less to get to it. They hooked me in nice and tight, and then it was time to walk backwards into oblivion. Right as I took the first few steps, a HUGE gust of wind blew me a bit to the side, which really got the heart beating, and as I steadied myself and began to descend, there was no going back. I was given a helmet, which I doubt would do any bit of good had something catastrophic happened, and gloves, which were a bit too big for my hand and therefore made it quite difficult to control the rate of my descent. We were supposed to keep our hand at our hip and let the rope feed through it as we climbed down, but I kept having it creep up in front of me, at which point I’d bring it back down to my side. Thankfully, I could tell that the guys at the top were having more success controlling my speed, so I stopped worrying about it and kept walking.

The other tricky thing was making sure to keep my feet below my waist so that I didn’t wind up upside-down on a mountain-side. That, I was successful in doing, so on the whole, I’d say I did a pretty solid job for having never done this before. I took a couple of glances to my side where I could see what was somewhat below me, but never looked completely downward. No thank you. As I continued to walk down the rock, all of a sudden I took a step – and there was no more rock. Well, there was some rock, but it was approximately 20 feet away, and there was no chance I could get over to it. So now, I’m wondering what exactly the hell I’m supposed to do, at which point the rope spins me around to face the ocean and the town next to it as I’m slowly lowered down the remainder of the drop while getting to enjoy the view. Talk about a “Holy Shit” moment. I heard Ryan calling up to me, so I looked down at that point to see him on the ground, as well as the landing point for me. They didn’t mention that part in the brochure, I know that much, but it was pretty damn cool once the shock wore off.

Of course, now that we were at the bottom, we had to get back up to the top…so we could go back to the bottom of the mountain. The guys at the top said it would be a 25 minute walk up to the top. Much like how the mountain biking was only “10% uphill”, this information was wildly inaccurate as well. To start, the “path” that we were supposed to take was exceedingly dangerous and oftentimes we were within inches of tumbling 3000 feet to our death down the mountainside. There were big rocks to climb over, muddy rocks that were easy to slip on, and a few times not even a clear designation of where to go next. I kept wondering if maybe somehow we’d missed the real path and were on some other crazy path, but we never saw any other path that we could take, so we continued onward.

We had been walking for roughly half an hour before we encountered 2 tourists who, for some inexplicable reason, were making their way down the path that we were going up, and they told us that it was another 20 minutes to the top. Some 25 minute walk. Shortly after we passed them, there was a sign facing the direction of people going down the path. The sign’s message? “THIS IS NOT AN EASY WAY DOWN”. Yeah, no shit. As we went further onward and further upward, we finally started to get to the top, at which point we saw another sign, again facing towards travelers who would be descending. This one read “WARNING: Extremely dangerous route with steep rock climbing and difficult navigation. DO NOT attempt this route if inexperienced. Use at own risk.” Wow. Thanks guys, for letting us know that we’d be put on an expert hiking trail to return to the top. Finally, after roughly 50 minutes of strenuous, stressful hiking, we made it to the top and headed to the cable car to get the hell out of there and back down on the ground.

At this point, it was after 4pm and we were missing the US match, so our guide from Downhill Adventures, who didn’t go up the mountain with us, went to get the van to take us back to the hotel. Luckily, there was enough time for me to buy my own vuvuzela with the South African flag wrapped around it in decal-form. Perfect for tomorrow night’s match. We finally made it back to the hotel, where we ran up to catch the final minute of the first half, only to see that it was 0-0. Ugh. On the way back, we had learned that England was winning 1-0, so we absolutely needed to win to advance to the next round. It was bad enough that we hadn’t scored, but then we learned that Dempsey’s goal was disallowed thanks to another crap referee decision, and it just felt like it was going to be 2006 all over again.

The second half of the match was an exercise in increasing stress as the minutes melted away on the clock with the score remaining 0-0. Ryan was on the bed with Rocio, while I was sitting in the desk chair to the side – my usual spot for sports watching as it allows me to repeatedly jump up in anticipation of something happening. Every missed opportunity by the US, every near-chance for Algeria, every whistle by the referee – everything wound tighter and tighter. Meanwhile, Slovenia was doing nothing to challenge England, as it seemed like every time we flipped to the other channel the ball was deep in Slovenia’s end or England had possession. I was keeping track on ESPN while we were watching our match as well. When Dempsey hit his ball of the post and then blasted wide, I was sure that we were headed for 0-0 and a quick exit in disgrace out of the tournament.

The minutes crept into the 80s and still, nothing. Donovan had been absent the entirety of the half, the defense was shaky, Altidore wasn’t doing much when he got the ball, and Edson Buddle had headed wide on an earlier opportunity. Closer and closer to the end we came, and the stress increased further, and further, and further some more. And then, out of nowhere, comes Landon Donovan, savior of America, to slot the ball into the corner of the net. I don’t know if he could be seen on the HD feed running to the ball, but we sure as hell had no idea that anybody was there until he came storming in to slam the ball home and send us through to the next round. Unbelievable. Ryan jumped off the bed, I jumped out of the chair, we hugged, yelled, screamed. The vuvuzela was unleashed outside the room – it was complete and utter elation. Not only had we won the match, but we won the group as well, and all of a sudden, the matches tonight mattered a lot.

We decided to make our way down to the Fan Fest to watch the match between Germany and Ghana since we hadn’t been there previously and it was supposedly packed the night before. Since it was only 2km away, we walked there, and went down one of the main streets for nightlife in Cape Town. Tons of restaurants, bars, people having a good time. I was wearing my US jersey, and every USA fan that we passed along the way gave high-fives, fist-bumps, chants of U-S-A and so on. It was a fully festive atmosphere. There was a double-decker bus circling the streets painted in England colors with girls on the back dancing to music that was playing which passed us while we ate some burgers before we continued on to the Fest. Once we got there, it was pretty underwhelming, as there weren’t all that many people around to watch. They did have cheap beer (only $2.50) that wasn’t Budweiser, and that’s all that mattered. Ghana and Germany played a largely uneventful match, with Germany and Australia thankfully winning, allowing the US to have Ghana as its next opponent. Ghana has yet to score a goal that wasn’t a penalty shot in this tournament, and so compared to the hand that fate dealt England (Germany first, with the winner of Argentina-Mexico to follow), I feel pretty good about our chances to continue onwards. Unfortunately, as the only African team remaining, the USA will be going up against an entire continent on Saturday when they play.

Finally exhausted from the intensity of the day, we took a cab back to the hotel as soon as I got some antibiotic cream for my cut-up hands. Thankfully, tomorrow is a calm day and the potential for injury is quite low. We’ll be heading to the District 6 museum and Robben Island to learn us a little history.

written by  nucappy on June 23, 2010 from Cape Town, South Africa
from the travel blog: London and South Africa - World Cup 2010!
tagged SouthAfrica, CapeTown and WorldCup
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