First Full Day in South Africa - June 25

The day did not start well or should I say the first night of sleep sucked. Lora and I barely got any sleep and once we hit our stride the alarm went off. We told Mabel we'd be at breakfast at 8:30am and when the alarm started going off at 7:45am we mumbled to each other that we'd just get ready after breakfast. My plan to get up early before we got here was clearly foiled.

After we coaxed ourselves to make it to breakfast we started to wake up. We were presented with 2 options - a cooked "English" breakfast or a Continental breakfast. We both went for the English and I loved it - however Lora didn't feel that well afterwards so she'll be doing Continental tomorrow.

All throughout breakfast we talked to an English lady that has been here since the start and learned a bunch of pointers and heard some funny stories. She told us we definitely need to go to the Lion Park which is where we are headed today just as soon as we get ready. It's about a 20-25 minute drive to the Lion Park and it's roughly on the way to Pretoria which is about a 40-45 minute drive typically.

We still can't really decide whether or not to take the big camera bag with all of the lenses due to the risk of our trunk being broken into but since we are going to see lions we're going to take the 70-200mm lens and leave the 300mm in the room. We'll switch to the small camera bag for the game and walking around Pretoria.

After we got done getting ready we headed out to the Lion Park. It was about a 20 minute drive or so and we hit just about every single light just as it was turning red. We entered the gates and made our way to the place to buy tickets – they were reasonably priced for the self-drive tour and just a bit more for the guided tour. We had heard that it was better to do the self-drive anyways – hell, we had a Kia Rio which is basically the best offroading vehicle out there – Land Rovers in the parking lot were scared just hearing her engine purr. We started the trek and the first 5 minutes were pretty boring – dirt and grass. Eventually though we stumbled upon an animal – a zebra - then another zebra and quite a few other animals. They were pretty close to the road so we stopped to take some pictures. The monopod + 70-200 combo was perfect for this. I was in heaven. Eventually we made our way on to the next part – a fork in the road. Right was the road to the lions and left was the road to the cheetahs and hyenas. We decided to head towards the cheetahs. This was by far the biggest letdown of the day. There wasn’t a single cheetah or hyena in site. The closest thing to anything living were these dumb birds. The Kia was pissed off and so were we. We remembered that this was called the Lion park though and not the Cheetah and Hyena park so we rallied and calmed the Kia down – she was in her element and putting right along after a little chat. Once we got to the Lion area we quickly noticed a sign or 100 – every 3 feet there were signs mentioning “Do not open your window or you will die – if you get out of your car a lion will eat you – we will not help – we will laugh and point.” The first thing we did when we saw a lion was roll down our window. There was no way that a stupid piece of dirty glass was going to get in my way from being published in National Geographic. Look for my pictures in the October issue. We took tons of pictures of the lions and it was great.

After we took all of the pictures we could take we headed back to the main area where we bought our tickets. Included in the price was the chance to wait in a 20 minute long line to pet a lion cub – SOLD. On the way to the line we stopped to check out the giraffes and the meerkats. If meerkats didn’t dig holes everywhere we’d buy one immediately – they are just so darn cute. While waiting in line, we saw one of the not so rare creatures in prime form – idiot girl. They let people in to pet the lion cubs at about 10 at a time and there were 3 or 4 cubs. There was one cub however that was pissed off that people kept touching it so he’d run away. This genius girl decided to chase the angry cub around until she cornered it – she’d have lost an arm if the cub wasn’t so quick and got away. Eventually it was our turn to pet the cubs and Lora and I switched back and forth between taking pictures and petting – love the way your hand smells after petting an animal the rolls in the dirt all day. We then headed out.

Next stop – Loftus Versfeld Stadium! We headed to Pretoria and it was pretty uneventful. We hit a little traffic but not gridlock. There were signs the whole way there that were clear. We made it to the park and walk with 3.5hrs or so to go. It was about a kilometer from the parking spot to the stadium and we took our time to get there – stopping off to listen to random crowds sing and yell. We were starting to get very excited by the crowds. On the way to the stadium we stopped off and had a “bratwurst” – which is in quotes because we have no idea what in the hell it was. It looked like a bratwurst but sure didn’t taste like one. Lora made it through half and I pretty much killed it. We won’t be ordering anymore of those. Then we headed into the stadium and what a sight it was. I was highly impressed and we were in awe. The crowds were just beginning to form and we had quite some time until kickoff. We just took it all in – found our seats – took a lot of pictures – listened. The sound was great – singing and vuvuzelas. The vuvuzelas were definitely not as loud as we had anticipated – our ear plugs went unused without even a thought of using them.

Eventually the game was about to be underway. We were surrounded largely by a Chile crowd and since we didn’t really care who won we decided Chile was our team as well. We joined in a few of the chants/songs they did (the ones that weren’t completely in Spanish). It was absolutely amazing. Our seats could have been a little higher but that’s about it – we had a great view of the 2 Spanish goals in the first half and the Chile goal in the second. Unfortunately Spain controlled the game for the most part so the second half was a bit boring on our end. We had a bite to eat at the stadium since Lora’s “bratwurst” left her unsatisfied. Lora ordered a chili hotdog and was pretty excited about it when she sat back down next to me – until she looked at it. No chili on top – doh! However one bite in quickly told her this was no regular hotdog – it had chili peppers embedded in it. I thought it was tasty but Lora again was not impressed. The McDonalds drive-thru on the way home finally quenched her hunger. The game was a ton of fun and I still can hardly believe we saw a World Cup match live. The attendance that night was 46k or so I think – they announced it but we can’t quite remember. The Chile crowd as whole was louder but the Spanish crowd wasn’t quiet by any means. It ended 2-1 in Spain’s favor and they deserved it I thought.

After the game was over we made our way back to the car and getting back to Kulanga couldn’t have been easier. There was basically no traffic the whole way back and we made good time.

That’s all for today – I feel like I’ve been typing for hours because about half way through this my PC locked up and it wasn’t saved. I took a picture of the screen and was able to recreate most of it though.