Tag Archives: Soccer

15 Days Out

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Life has been proceeding at a brisk pace since the beginning of April. It’s shocking to look back at our last post of over a month ago, as it seems like just the other day. Unfortunately, our current jobs keep us very busy and there has been little resolution on Mozambique. We have decided to simply head to Maputo, check flights to Nampula, and if they’re not to our liking then we’ll slowly head north till it is time to turn around.

Our Lonely Planet – Southern Africa came the other day along with out Kodak Playsport camera. You can see the first shots of it on www.theafricanfile.com under the video blog.  With Lonely Planet as her inspiration, Alisa has been scouting out Victoria Falls and tours to Etosha in Namibia and Chobe in Bostwana. These seem to be popular among the backpackers and tour operators in Livingstone, and Alisa is trying to find us something that will be cost effective compared to trying to do these on our own with no transportation. We haven’t yet worked out how to get to Livingstone, but it seems like all we need to do is get to Windhoek and then there will be transport out to Zambia from there.

In the time just before this, we have decided to head straight from our last World Cup match in Bloemfontien to Windhoek via Kimberley. However, getting between these two places is not as easy as one would expect, because even though they are seperated by just a few hours, they are not on a popular travel route. Buses run from Joburg to Cape Town through either of these two towns, but not between. Our plan was to leave Bloem to Kimberley, then to Uptington and up to Windhoek. This is all still possible, but buses are infrequent and may require us to spend up to 4 days in Kimberley. After reading the Lonely Planet exerpt on the town though, that might not be a bad thing. This seems to be the going plan, but Alisa needs to set out firmer dates for Livingstone and a possible tour based out of there.

Alisa seems to be willing to sacrifrice the Garden route in order to see Etosha and Chobe, so we may be arriving back in Cape Town after the WC Final (11 July). I had been hoping to get to experience the day of the final in country, but that might be something that has to be sacrificed in order to see what we want to see.

Hopefully, accommodation in South Africa will be sorted by next week, and Alisa can coordinate our Livingstone plans simultaneously so those are all set by the time we depart.

Everything in terms of supplies, has been acquired or on our final checklist. Hopefully this weekend will see everything come together so that our 4 pre-flight days can be spent packing and buying last minute items.

Underwhelming ticket sales? Not when it comes to finding Accommodation

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Finally had time to start booking accommodation today. I immediately regretted taking nearly two months to start looking. I was definitely not expecting such long term planning by those who had partaken in the ticket process. For months, I had heard anecdotes of people who had turned back tickets or who did not know how they would get to South Africa. This definitely lulled me into false sense of having no urgency in booking places to stay.

That sense was reset today as Alisa and I went down the list of backpackers and hostels and Bed & Breakfasts in the areas located near in the host cities (Rustenburg, Joburg, Bloemfontein, and Pretoria). Granted it was only one day, and I have been able to map out our first 10 days, it is no where near as affordable as we had once thought. I had figured 50 USD per day including food, but we are looking are more like R450 (60 bucks) only on lodging. This is going to significantly impact our budge, but seeing as its only a 16 day stretch that we need to be near match locations, hopefully we can balance it out by staying at some lower end places later on our trip. Many of the more affordable places were predicably already booked, so we’re having to go more midrange, but even that doesn’t help considering most places are raising their rates by 400%. I knew rates would be higher than when we were there in 2007, but this is quite the extreme. We can only hope that rates will come back down once the world leaves ZA in mid July.

In more uplifting news, we got a great rate on a car for a 15 day period between the 10th and the 25th. We went through Tempest Car Hire, who far and away had the best rates. Seeing as Alisa, nor I, have much experience driving with an automatic (our ‘privileged’ upbringing playing a part), we decided to simply stick with an automatic, and we were able to secure a Toyota Corrolla (or like model) for less than 1,000 USD for that period (R6300 to be exact). A significant amount of coin, but this is the most critical period for getting around, and not making it to a match because of transportation delays would simply make any money we saved worthless in the end. If you’re looking for a car hire in South Africa, definitely check those guys out. We looked at Avis, Thrifty, Aroundabout, Budget (who require international drivers licences), Imperial/Europcar, Kenning, Kulula, and 1First. Europcar was the closest by R500.

We’ll be sure to let you know the service and support that they offer for their discounted rates.

Hopefully tomorrow will see finalizations on the lodging part as Alisa and I are waiting for South Africans to wake up right about now and start writing us back….

2010 – Year of African Football

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Since the World Cup in Germany in 2006 concluded, I have had South Africa on my radar as the place I want to be in 2010.

Since graduating from UC San Diego, in my free time that I haven’t been interning, I have refereed over 250 youth and adult soccer games in an attempt to save up enough to fund my the expenses that a return to South Africa and the events of a World Cup would entail.

The football calendar in 2009-2010 has been packed with major tournaments taking place all over the African continent. First, the U-20 World Cup in Egpyt followed by the U-17 World Cup in Nigeria produced exciting football and two new world champions in Ghana and Switzerland respectfully. The African Cup of Nations picked up in Angola at the beginning of the 2010 calender year, starting off with the attack on the Togolese football team, who inexplicably traveled by coach, were attack in the enclave of Cabinda, where a civil war as not concluded. Why Angola thought that Cabinda was sutiable for matches, and why CAF allowed this site selection still has not been explained. The tournament ended with Egypt cementing their status as a legendary team with a third consecutive championship (oddly though, this team has yet to qualify for the two World Cup during is era of dominance).

When FIFA told me that my application for tickets came through with all 5 games that I requested, the pieces started to fall in piece.

Now the plane tickets are booked, the task of planning out the trip pre- and post- World Cup begins. As the three weeks that I have tickets for during the tournament writes its own itinerary, the 2 weeks before and after have to be planned to make sure that our time is best spent getting to where we want to be.

The first match starts in Rustenburg on 12 June, where the US will play England in their opening match of Group C. Then it is on to Johannesburg for the match against Slovenia 6 days later. We head down the N1 to Bloemfontein for South Africa’s final group match against France on the 22nd, then straight back up the N1 to Pretoria where the US will play Algeria 24 hours later. Finally, we have tickets to the Second Round game back in Bloemfontein on the 27th, where if the US finishes second in their group, they will meet the winner from Group D (Like Germany, but could be Serbia, Australia, or Ghana). If the US finishes top of the group, or does not advance, obviously that game would not mean as much, but considering my previous ties to England and Slovenia where I spent significant time growing up, it would not be a loss to go to that match to cheer them on instead.

Time is fast approaching to arrange for accommodation and travel during the tournament. It will be curious to see if it is as tourist filled and as crazy as some predict or whether it will be a bust as some naysayers are predicting. I have been surprised to read how many people who won tickets in the lottery subsequently will not go to SA due to cost of travel. Alisa and I have no intention at staying at hotels during our time in SA if it can be avoided, thus hopefully escaping the heightened prices that established places will be set to charge unknowing visitors. However, planning in advanvce at the places that we frequented on our previous jaunts around Southern Africa has proved best when done weeks in advance, not many months. Thus our planning does not have the same urgency as one who needs to book nice hotel reservations months in advance. Though, we do need to sit and plan where we want to be and how to get from place to place.