Post Zim at the Cup.

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July 14th 2010

Published: August 3rd 2010

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GPgisborne

1322 Backpackers

Backpackers in Pretoria where we spent most of our time.

Finally have got a computer that I can spend some decent time on, so these first few are just going to be brief catch ups as it's already a month late.

After getting back to Pretoria we took things pretty easy, it was like going back to the future, houses instead of the cup, cars with windows and even jets flying overhead daily. This was almost the holiday of our holiday, we found some great people, Adam Oger and Darryl from the Uk and Simon from Aussie, along with others at 1322 Backpackers we had one of the most fun weeks of the journey. We found 60cm pizzas in the Fan Festival which was about a ten min walk away away (day or night). This FanFest was a square surrounded by bars and eateries so when you got in it was safe to sit outside and have a beer and 2 slices max of the giant pizzas. Back at the backpackers cards and poker were the usual, congrats to Matt who after 3 hours got his 30 Rand for winning ($6).

After 5 days we headed to Soweto in Jburg to stay until the final. This is one of

Day time

the most well known 'Townships' (slums etc) in the country, although we lived in a nice block only accross the road were the mud or brick walled shacks with tin on top. Friendly enough to walk around tho so all good.

Seeing the All Blacks win when In SA was pretty sweet and led to a fairly large day and night of party. We were sure to remind anyone wearing a springbok jersey how good we were incase they had forgotten.

11th. Matt and Dan take off to final about 2pm (pre game entertainment), after figuring I wouldn't be able to get ticket I went to local FanFest but it wasn't that appealing and could see it getting pretty scary when I had to leave that night. Ended up catching a R9 ($1.80) train for the 60km journey to Pretoria, got there just in time to catch Adam, Darryl and Si and the game so all good.

When back in Jburg we went to the apartheid museum, wanted to see things that would shake me, it didn't fail. Provocative photos, movies and props were everwhere. Videos of the shoot ups, people dead everywhere, Nelson Mandela's solitary confinement

Night Time

Darryl, Adam, Matt

cell etc etc were all real interesting, there was also a special exhibition on Mandela which went through his whole life. We turned up an hour before it closed so didn't get to take it all in but got the general ideas. Watching Invictus on the plane a few weeks later helped too...

Said goodbye to Matty and Dan on the morning of the 14th, they took off home while I jumped on a 1600km train to Cape Town...

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