First Night in South Africa - June 24

We made it!

Our first stop was customs, which was an easy one with no problems. Then we made our way to Vodafone to buy a prepaid SIM so we could make emergency calls and have data access. The phone thing turned out to be way more trouble than I anticipated. We bought a voucher for prepaid minutes but it was not automatically applied like I thought - before sleep we sorted that mess out and all is well now. After that we headed to the automated ticket retrieval machines. We swiped my credit card and out popped 6 tickets! No hassle at all and I could hardly believe it was that easy. Then we made our way to the Hertz car rental area where we told them our name and they handed us some keys basically - keys to a lovely Kia Rio.

The Kia is a POS that pulls hard to the left. It's a struggle to keep the damn thing going straight. We made our way to the hotel and it wasn't too hard but it definitely took a lot of concentration - mainly to judging where I'm at in a lane based on the left side lane marks. Lora made sure I was on the center for the most part and it wasn't a long drive to Kulanga where we're staying. Once we finally arrived, we were greeted by Lucienne and Mabel. Mabel showed us to our room and it's pretty nice. The room has all of the typical essentials although I think the walls might be thin as we can even hear the neighbors coughing from time

After we checked in we went back to the front desk to ask for a place to grab a bite and a beer and they recommended this place that was just a short walk up the street - Europa. We made our way over there in time for kickoff for the 8:30pm matches and ordered some Castle Light and a Mafiosa pizza. The pizza was a bit spicy but not too bad and the beer was a light beer with a great taste. While there we chatted with our waiter for a bit and since the place was ready to close by halftime we asked him where we should head to afterwards. He recommended a part of town called Green Sides which was near his apartment and just a short drive up the street. He then offered to show us where it was and we took him up on it. We went back to grab the car while he closed out and stopped back by Europa to get directions (or so we thought). Israel hopped in the back and we were on our way. We drove about 2 miles up the street and came upon an area with a ton of bars and restaurants. He took us to a place where he knew some people that worked there and we sat down just in time for the 2nd half to begin. We ordered some more Castle Light - 6 of them cost 196R which ended up being less than $15 after tip. We checked the menu at Cappello and it looked pretty intriguing and even had some Sushi - we'll definitely make it back there at some point.

The best part of the night was by far the conversations we had with Israel. He knows 8 languages and it working on his 9th. We embarrassingly told him we barely know English and he clearly didn’t get the joke because he reassured us that our English was perfect – I haven’t had a chance to speak a lot I guess. He was from Zimbabwe and in Jo'burg studying "Accounts" which we took to mean Accounting/Finance. He told us some of his life history and it was quite interesting. He moved from Zimbabwe due to the bad situation going on there which we had no idea about but he enlightened us. Evidently the president lost a recent election there and determined it to be unfair so sent his military out to scare people into voting for him in a revote. He won with 90% of the vote - welcome to corruption. He is going to be working some of the World Cup games and perhaps one of the games we'll be at.

After the game was over we closed out and parted ways - not before exchanging phone #s though. About 5 minutes after we made it back to Kulanga, Israel called to make sure we made it home safely. Lora and I were both impressed with how kind he was.


All in all it was an amazing first night here - we can't wait for tomorrow! Time for bed now though.