Back to Joburg

Day 34-35, Monday and Tuesday, June 28-29, Joburg

We arrived back in Johannesburg Monday morning around 930 after another 17 hour ride. The movies were better this time (not saying a whole lot when you only have to improve upon "Madea Goes to Jail"), but dinner the night before, at Steers, what appears to be SA's favorite fast food restaurant, left something to be desired, so we were both starving. I can say with complete certainty that that meal was by far the most disgusting one we've had thus far. That restaurant, coupled with the incredible number of KFC's in this country, I'm pretty sure explains SA's struggle to rise to world dominance.

We got some lunch, watched the replays of the games From the night before that we'd missed by being on the bus (England-Germany and Argentina-Mexico). They do these great extended highlights of games on the main sports channel here where they show all the good scoring opportunities, defensive plays, and fouls, so you kinda feel like you watched the whole game in 20 minutes.

We weren't allowed to check into the hostel until 2, so we just kind of hung around playing pool and Foosball until the hour arrived.

We had tickets to the Chile-Brazil game, and it was a lot OD fun hearing the Chileans get ready by singing and dancing while grilling outside at the hostel. We're pros at the bus system to the stadium by now, so got down there really easily. We attempted to find our favorite little ladies who sell sausages outside Ellis Park (we'd had first and second dinner with them the last time we were at that stadium), but we got routed some strange way getting off the bus and had to settle for second-rate ones.

A combination of love of the underdog and a newfound  hatred of Kaka and Luis FabiMano after the last game led us to cheer for Chile. We were in the vast, vast minority. The stadium was a sea of the green and gold of Brazil and they were loud. Some Guy above us was even playing an accordion. Mad props dude.

The Chileans played courageously for most of the first half an probably had some of the better scoring opportunities. Unfortunately the Brazilian offense was too much for them and once the first goal was scored, it was like the floodgates were opened. To their credit, the Brazilians didn't flop nearly as much as they did in the past, but I did decide that Kalke runs like a disabled ostrich. Watch him next game; you'll see what I mean. Also, for all the complaining we've done about the refs this tournament, we thought the ones at this game were exceptional, and probably deserve much of the credit for the Brazilians good behavior.

On the downside, I'm very much over the vuvuzelas. They're not only really annoying but you can literally feel your eardrum vibrating. It's not a pleasant experience.

Another unpleasant experience was trying to get back on a bus after the game. They've developed this insane system wherein the load one bus at a time. It's not the most efficient way to move 50,000 people out.

We relished the chance to do laundry Tuesday morning and then were stymied when we realized the drier was broken...after we'd washed our clothes. The lovely scent of mildew will thus be traveling with us back to PE, where we return to tonight. We have tickets to the Brazil-Netherlands game there on Friday, but might try to sell those, move up ourbus to Cape Town by a day, and try to get tickets to the Argentina quarterfinal. An ambitious plan, to be sure, but it just might work. Stay tuned.