Blogs from Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa, Africa - page 7

We spent one night at our friend Brett's house in Pretoria and then took two Kombi's via Brits to Rustenburg. We hired a taxi to take us to the Rustenburg Safari Camp, which was nestled in a park on top of a small mountain. There we met up with Tym (who we ended up calling Tymbo Dangerous), a Canadian we met in Nelspruit, and Redmond, a Brit that had worked with Tym in Madagascar previously. This camp was set up for the FIFA tournament. They had a tent with a flat screen tv and a projector to watch all the games, and were also set up to cook three meals a day. We cooked all of our own meals. We were getting ready to watch the US vs. England game, when about two hours before the ... read more

More pictures from the tour... read more

June 24th The morning smelled of victory and the evidence was everywhere to be seen. Americans littered the hostel once again, remnants of face paint were left on our faces as we talked about the game over breakfast. The energy that morning was really special and optimism was at a high, everyone was thinking we could make it to the semi finals of the World Cup. After starting out the day I met up with Trevor to venture into Pretoria and buy some essentials for the trip. I planned on buying a tent because the cost of South African dorm rooms were getting ridiculous, $50 for a dorm bed is insane and despicable if you ask me. So we headed for Hatfield and another area called Brooklyn, walking a total of close to 10 kilometers to ... read more

Bush Fire festival in Swaziland was soooo AWESOME! Showed up with Justin and Hanan to the campground adjacent to the festival for 3 nights. The festival took place at a very special venue “House of Fire” in the country side of Swaziland. With a partially covered amphitheater stage made with custom art work sculptures built into the structure. Like nothing i"ve seen before so much time and love put into it. Behind the amphitheater area was a full festival stage with a field that held up to 10,000 people. The music was very unique world / African music. A bit different from music I am accustomed to. Some headliners were the Parlatones and Freshly Ground both of which played at the World Cup opening concert in Johannesburg last Thursday. Many local Swazi's attended, a strong ... read more

I'll try to keep this post mainly focused on what it was liek to be at the johannesburg fan fest at innesfreepark for the opening world cup game of south africa v mexico. South Africans affectionately call their team "Bafana Bafana" - whose meaning I haven't got a clue of yet. Their team has a fifa ranking of 83 whereas mexico has a fifa ranking of 17. In all honesty I expected bafana bafana to be blown out with something along the lines of 3-1 for mexico. The opening minutes of the match seemed to verify my initial guess but around the 25th minute bafana bafana really started heating things up and it was an entirely new game. The goal scored by the south african forward sometime in the 50-60th minutes was a shocker. I ... read more