A day of Shopping and Argentia / Mexico - June 27

Not a whole lot of funny stories today - just shopping and soccer basically.

We woke up a little later than we have been because we had no hard plans for the morning. The rough plan for the day was to go to the Rosebank African market, then back to the Apartheid museum, and finally to the game. We never made it to the Apartheid museum because we spent a ton of time at the African market. We spent way too much money but got just about all of our souvenir shopping done - the extra duffel bag we brought is basically full now. We bought some clothing for the game as well - Lora was dressed to support Argentina and I was going to be decked out in Bafana Bafana gear (the name for the South African team). They had a little bit of everything at this market and it was mostly based on the bargaining system - we're not bargainers and I'm sure we got taken for more than we should have but we're writing it off to supporting the local economy.

After we were shopped out we had 3 goals - eat, find an internet cafe, and buy some binoculars (we left both pairs we own at home). First up was food - we sat down at a place with a patio area named Crank. It was a weird combination of Thai / Vietnamese / various other assorted Asian dishes. We ordered an appetizer and 2 dishes to share and it was way too much food - we barely ate half. The lady that cleared the table seemed to think we didn't like it, but we loved the food there was just an incredibly large amount of it. Next we made our way to the internet cafe which conveniently enough was closed on Sunday. Then we went on the hunt for binoculars - after previously seeming some for 1000R (~$150) and laughing at how we were thinking more along the lines of 200-300R. We ended up finding some at this mini REI type store for a much more reasonable price but still expensive based on our original budget. Lora had a chance to test them out at the game later that night and they definitely do the trick. The final thing on our list was to find a place to post the blog. After driving to another shopping area and finding the internet cafe closed there we gave up and headed back to the B&B. By this time, we had decided the Apartheid museum would have to wait until we got back to Jo'burg after the safari. Basically as soon as we got to Kulanga we noticed that they had wifi, but the signal just didn't reach our cottage. I walked closer to the front reception area and picked up a signal and we were on our way! I'm fairly certain the internet on my phone was faster but it got the job done and we posted the past 2 days of blogs and then realized we were running late so headed out to Soccer City.

We had been warned of the crazy traffic getting to the games, but they must have cleared it up by this game. We hit very little traffic and made great time - arrived to the parking area by 5:30 and had 3 hours to kill. The crowd in the parking lot was already pretty loud and it definitely got louder as we got closer to the stadium. We decided to park at the Rand Show Park and Walk (we passed just about every other parking area provided by Fifa on the way - we screwed up the planning on this one. After we got our bearing and the large amount of warm clothing put on we made our way towards the stadium, which at this point was nowhere in sight. It would remain out of sight for a very long time. The park and walk is not for the out of shape - we walked at least 2 miles and very likely more. We didn't make it inside the stadium until 6:30, but stopped along the way to take pictures and the such. The longer the walk the more worried we got. I was attempting to bring in one of our very large lenses and from what we've read they won't let you, however we did see a guy at the previous game with a pretty large lens. If we were going to have to take it back to the car I would have been cussing the whole way back. We decided to wrap the lens up in a scarf as to fool the police search - how sneaky. We walked up to the search area and metal detectors. The guy began searching through the bag and finally made it to the main pocket. He found a hard object under my scarf and immediately asked what that was in a somewhat alarming tone. I told him it was just a camera lens and he checked one more time then handed me my bag. Woohoo! After that we were on a mission - FOOD. We walk up to the concession stand and what a disappointment. Muffins were the main attraction. We continued the search and kept seeing people with hotdogs but couldn't find the place to buy them. We asked someone and they just pointed to this large unmarked white tent. We walk around to it and sure enough - they serve 2 things. 1 of them was that bratwurst looking thing we ate the other day and the other was the delicious footlong hotdog. We handed the man 75R and he handed us 3 hotdogs. We found a less crowded area and ate them while taking in the crowd. Then it was time to find our seats. We knew we were in the top section so we climbed the massive ramps and found out section. A-BB the sign read. Well damn - we had AA. I said well we're second to last and not last at least. Lora made some comment about how the rows went A-Z then AA-AZ then BA-BZ and I just laughed and kept walking. Sure enough I was the correct one here. We climbed the stairs and were pleasantly surprised when we sat down. The view was amazing and we've definitely had worse seats at other stadiums before. We were just about in the center of the pitch and I got even more excited about bringing the large camera lens. I ended up switching the lens a few times throughout the game just to get some different shots - even Lora had a moment of photographic creativity with a good vuvuzela shot. The atmosphere up in the nosebleeds was definitely calmer than at the bottom, but still very loud and fun. We were seated next to some Brits that we chatted with a bit. The crowd became insane with the first goal - the vuvus were in full effect at this point and it was a great experience. Whoever said you need earplugs was incorrect - maybe for small children but that's it. I even had Lora next to be blowing our vuvu every 3 minutes - she kept getting shown up by the guy to my left though - he was a seasoned pro it seemed. They showed the replay of the first goal and crowd erupted again and the Mexican crowd rushed the sideline ref. It was clearly offsides and the call wasn't made - it was a horrible miss on the ref's part. The rest of the game the Argentinians controlled the game and it was a great display of footwork. The game ended and we hung around for a bit before finally making our way to the exit to begin the long trek back to the parking area. Lucky that we did because on the way out we spotted the Calitards - they were in our same section just a few rows lower. We kept on walking hoping they didn't see us (I tried to snap a quick photo but didn't get the shot I wanted).

On the way back to the car it was pretty uneventful other than the large mass of people going the same way as us. A random Argentinian cheer every now and then would erupt which was fun. We got in the car and it looked like it was going to take a long time to get anywhere but it moved pretty quick and within 5 minutes we were on the road back to Kulanga. Of course on the way back we made our second late night McD's stop and it was just as delicious as the night before - this time it took 20 minutes in drive-thru for only 10-15 cars.

Once we got back to the room we packed everything in preparation for the safari the next day and finally made it to bed.