Hanging out at Marloth Park

Mobile Blogging from here.

We've been here for a couple of days now and have seen four of the big five ... we're off for a night drive later; hopefully see a leopard then.

(Still licking my wounds ... we wuz robbed!)

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Loads to say about PE ...

... but I've run out of time for now. Enough to say we had a mini-school reunion:

It was like old times for David, Craig, and Gavin and I ... we all agreed that none of us had changed a bit after 30 years!

On to PE!

The last day of our Garden route trip took us from Plettenberg Bay to Port Elizabeth:

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View of Robberg nature reserve from Plet:

We visited Storms River Mouth in the Tsitsikamma national park:

Its a long, long road!:

Garden Route

Next day (after stopping at the post office tree to send postcards) we headed off to Plettenberg Bay:

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Had lunch at Knysna heads and then split up since David's lot went straight to PE, and then on Grahamstown to meet up with friends and we were going to Plettenberg bay to meet Dave and Carol Pitt.

Both Yin and I know David and Carol from England in the early 90s, and David and I went to high school together.

Off to PE

We broke the journey to PE into three, heading to Mossel Bay on the first day via the (somewhat) famous Route 62:

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... had an excellent lunch in Montagu and headed across the little Karoo to Oudtshoorn. Got there too late to do both the caves and the ostriches so we split up.

We really took advantage of the birds:

1. Fed them
2. Stood on the their eggs
3. Sat on them
4. Rode them
5. Ate them as biltong!

They are farm animals and Highgate ostrich show farm incubates thousands of eggs and culls 150 animals a day to produce all sorts of things (including feather dusters!):

We've got excellent videos of me, James, Angela and Yin riding birds.

England vs. Algeria

Best not focus on the play and the result, but rather tell you about the amazing atmosphere in Cape Town on match day.

We arrived early and walked across town ... 2.5 km of partying from the station to the stadium:

Once again the England fans owned the stadium. There are a load of South Africans who have adopted the team too:

Wine and Cheetahs?

When I was at UCT we went on an annual rampage around the cape vineyards inevitably visiting the Spier estate near Stellenbosch.

They've been making wine there since 1692 ... but they've stopped producing the port we used to buy by the gallon and have gone very up-market.

They also now host a Cheetah sanctuary:

It seems the animals are spoiled by human contact and can't be returned to the wild. Strangely, the money they make from tourists goes to a program of purchasing Anatolian sheep dogs.

Cape Town for the day

We've been in Port Elizabeth for a couple of days now and I've finally got some to time to update the blog ... I'd expected the Internet to be available at every turn, silly me!

Got to go back a whole week to last Wednesday to pick up the thread. While we were staying with Christa's mum in Somerset West we headed to Cape Town for sight-seeing (or a trip down memory lane depending on your point of view).

The basic idea was to drive around the peninsula and wind up at UCT:

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Being a post-imperialist I gravitated to traces of Cecil Rhode's life (hard to miss actually). Here's Rhode's cottage in Muizenberg where he first settled when advised to emigrate to South Africa for his health:

Heading further down the road we arrived at Boulder's Beach ... who knew that Jackass penguins have been renamed African penguins by the PC police? They've established the place as a nature reserve, but you can still walk on the beach amongst the penguins:

We had lunch in Simon's Town a long-time Royal Navy town and then moved on to the beautiful Chapman's peak drive to Hout Bay ... they've made it a toll road in order to pay for maintenance of the precipitous outlooks along the way ... you have to say it reminds you a little of route 1 near Big Sur!:

I dragged both families across the UCT campus on a quest for t-shirts and memories winding up at Jameson Hall site of the annual step tobogganing relay races that ruined many a student's good looks!:

To get back to Rhodes we went up the mountain behind the campus to his memorial ... to take in the views.

The University was built on Rhode's Groote Schuur estate, the main residence of which became the home of generations of South African presidents to this day ... so, ironically enough, the British imperialists, Afrikaaner nationalists and Nelson Mandela have all literally slept in the same bed!

Picked up Angela ...

... from the new Cape Town international airport. Here's the view across the squatter camps to Table Mountain in the distance:

16 hours on the road

We completed the journey south yesterday (6/15) ...

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... 1 151 km ... not only was there a load of roadworks, and a huge detour for an accident, but it snowed for the first time in 18 years in the middle of the Karoo!:

We stopped for lunch at Victoria West at a real home-style koffie-huis:

... a high point in a day that went on and on and on! Got into Somerset West at 10:30 PM (after leaving at 06:30 AM)

Nihon! Banzai, Banzai, Banzai!

The other reason we stopped in Bloemfontein was to go to the Cameroon/Japan game (back-up game since we originally thought we might not get England tickets).

No bobbies ... but we did find boerre op perde:

The game turned out to be a major carnival and a complete culture clash!

We've honed our vuvuzela skills and at one point I was leading the entire stand in a call and reply (based on the mating call of a rampant ostrich).

Heading south

We left Jo'burg on Monday (14th) to head to Cape Town over two days. The first day's travel was a (relatively) short hop to Bloemfontein (~400 km):

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David had booked us into an excellent B&B in the countryside just to the north of Bloemfontein:

.. had a lekker braai with boerewors!

Eng-ger-land!

Best time of our lives ... what an experience. Mike and James and Vuvuzela experts ... led the crowd!

'ello 'ello 'ello ...

... what's going on here then?

The English fans found the best pub ...

... in Rustenberg!

Got tix

We had to go to the FIFA offices in Sandton to get the tickets ... quite the story there, believe me! Turns out by chance that our two separately allocated sets of tickets ended up four seats apart:

Jo'burg ...

... after 38 hours and two continents travel!

Mind the gap!

A (quick) day in London

£65 taxi from Heathrow to Golders Green ... £4.50 x 2 (kids free) on the Picadilly line back!

Not necessarily condoning this ...

... World Cup 2010 WAGs Tale - Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre ... but it came highly recommended!

World Cup's Most Shocking Moments ...

... on the BBC iPlayer now:

"Richard Bacon and guest presenter Peter Crouch look back on the 50 greatest shocks in the history of the World Cup, including Maradona's Hand of God incident and Zidane's headbutt."

Excellent viewing (or so I'm told!)

We just lost our captain!

In a classic case of bad-luck for England we just lost Rio Ferdinand to injury. This is a particular blow for we Man. United supporters since Rio hasn't had much luck all season with one thing or another.

Waving the flag!

We've had two supporters flags made by AA Flags in County Durham:

... at 6' x 4' we're planning to hang them in the stadiums in plain view. Keep an eye out for us!

Itinerary

There's quite an intricate itinerary for the road-trip to follow the England team around South Africa:

When we heard the draw we were amazed at how closely England's whereabouts tracked where we wanted to go ... even in the right order!

We'll be traveling in a counter-clockwise direction (naturally enough for the southern hemisphere!):

The first game is in Rustenberg conveniently enough since we're flying into Johannesburg that day. We all move to Cape Town (where I went to university) for the second game, and then on to Port Elizabeth (where David and I were brought up) for the last of the group games.

After that its back to Rustenberg for the round of 16 game and conveniently the quarter final will be in Johannesburg.

As plans stand we'll be back home for the semis and the final.

Blogging via Conversation

So, soon (about 9 days I think) - we'll be able to have instantaneous, real-time blogging updates by way of exercising our mouth and throat muscles, and actually talking.

Cool!

England team arrives in Rustenberg

We've just watched the BBC report of the team arriving at their training camp.

After an 11 hour flight from London and a long drive up to Rustenberg I'm sure they were all over the welcome celebrations!

Of course, we're leaving from San Francisco to London next week and will follow in their footsteps: we'll arrive at Johannesburg airport on Saturday morning after ~36 hours of travel, pick up our tickets, have time for lunch and then hit the road for the 2 hour journey to Rustenberg to watch England vs. USA:

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Tix

The major hurdle in planning the trip was negotiating the FIFA run ticketing process in the run-up to the tournament. Starting back in April last year, David and I started applying for each phase of tickets.

It wasn't until the third-round in January this year that we finally had some luck!

As it came down to the wire some of us got nervous:

"By the way, there's still 21 hours to go as of now ... when they say midnight they mean the end of January 22nd not the beginning ... silly me!

I'm in something of a quandary since I've been reading text like the following from the sales regulations:

2. Offer and Acceptance. Completion and submission of the Ticket Application Form to the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ Ticket Center ("FWCTC") or the FIFA Ticketing Office ("FTO") or any third party approved and authorized by FIFA constitutes an irrevocable and binding offer to FIFA by the individual completing and submitting the Ticket Application Form ("Ticket Applicant") to purchase a specified number and type of Tickets for Matches of the Event in accordance with the terms and conditions set forth in the Ticket Application Form, including, without limitation, these Ticket Sales Regulations.

... which says our application "constitutes an irrevocable and binding offer" to buy the tickets ... all $4000 of them currently!

Also, I noted this from the FAQ:

If I am successful in the application process, can I resell my tickets to someone else?
In accordance with the Sales Regulations and General Terms and Conditions that each ticket holder agreed to in connection with the ticket application process, ticket holders may not sell, offer for sale, resell, donate or otherwise transfer their ticket in any way, without the specific prior written approval of FIFA. Transfer requests will be considered in accordance with the Ticket Transfer Policy defined by FIFA and available onhttp://www.fifa.com/ once issued. The purposes for the rule limiting ticket transfers include: (a) event security, (b) consumer protection, and (c) economic fairness as described generally below.

... which means we can't resell excess tickets.

Ouch!

Now I do hear your argument that we'll probably not get an allocation.

However, in order to mitigate that risk that we might actually get what we're asking for I've switched my application to just 2 tickets per game ($2080).

If you guys do the same we'll see what we get!

Anthony."

What we didn't know - due to a lack of communication from FIFA in my opinion - was that the third round was where most of the tickets were going to be allocated!

And lo and behold on February 3rd:

"You're all asleep, but we've just seen that we got all the tickets we applied for!:

Item	Team/Venue	Seat Category	Quantity	Price
Match 5 - England v USA - 12 June 20:30	Royal Bafokeng Stadium	Category 1	2	$320.00
Match 10 - Japan v Cameroon - 14 June 16:00	Free State Stadium	Category 1	2	$320.00
Match 23 - England v Algeria - 18 June 20:30	Green Point Stadium	Category 1	2	$320.00
Match 37 - Slovenia v England - 23 June 16:00	Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium	Category 1	2	$320.00
Match 50 - R16 - 1C v 2D - 26 June 20:30	Royal Bafokeng Stadium	Category 1	2	$400.00
Match 58 - QF - W49 v W50 - 2 July 20:30	Soccer City Stadium	Category 1	2	$600.00
Total:			Quantity 12	$2280.00

Yippee!

Anthony."

Right now, on the eve of departure, we have a paper confirmation mailed from Zurich:

... which we expect to use at the ticket machines at Johannesburg airport when we arrive to finally get our hands on the hallowed tickets!

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