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Ayoba!

Pretoria, South Africa


Leaving Polokwane began with yet another delicious meal from McDonalds. For a change, this drive was straight highway all the way to Pretoria, where we were going to be staying at a condo owned by a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend. To put it another way, a person who lives in the US that I’ve never met before arranged with her friend in South Africa to host 4 people who she had never met before for 3 nights. It took a bit of trust on both ends of the deal, but it sure seems like it’s going to work out perfectly for us.

We arrived at the condo a bit after 11am, and attempted to find an internet café to try and reserve tickets at the Park-n-Ride to take us to the stadium for the match at 4pm. We were told there was one at a mall nearby, except that when we got there, we found out the café was gone, but there was one in another mall really close by. Well, that mall wasn’t that close by, and no one could really give me great directions to get there or anywhere else, so we just decided we’d wing it. When we were on safari, we talked to some other guests who had been in Jo’burg for games, and they mentioned a place to eat called Melrose Arch. As it turned out, while we were driving towards Jo’burg, I spotted it right off the highway, so we exited and made our way to the parking garage there. Total cost for the whole day? $6! Now we just had to find a cab to the match, and we’d be all set.

There was apparently another “Park-n-Ride” nearby, but it turned out that this one cost $50 per person round trip. Ridiculous and absurd. We ducked into a restaurant to grab some food, and they said they would get us a cab after the meal. They did exactly that, and we got a very nice driver in a BMW who took us down to the match as far as he could go without breaching the no-car perimeter that was set up around the stadium. He even walked with us for a bit to make sure we were safe, as the stadium is right next to a slum area that is full of Zimbabwean and Nigerian illegal immigrants. It was sad to drive by the area and see just how awful the living conditions were there. I honestly think the people living in one-story brick houses in the rural villages have a higher quality of life than the people here. In any event, the ride was only $25, and he offered to pick us up after the match. For winging it, this turned out really well.

As for the match itself, there’s only one word – Ayoba! Ayoba apparently is a slang term for “wow” or, more accurately, a “wow-factor”. If you watched the match, you know what I mean. But let’s start from entering the gates. The US support was through the roof. Everywhere I looked there were American flags, face paint, and vuvuzuelas. I tried to get a video or two capturing the atmosphere, but I’m not certain how well it worked. Once again we were sitting in the upper level, so we made our way up the winding ramps to the tune of USA chants and vuvuzuela blasts. We wound up in the 4th row of the upper level much closer to mid-field, which were great seats. In the “it’s a small world” category, we wound up sitting directly in front of an American family who was on our safari just a few days earlier. I was on the end of my group, so I wound up talking to a South African couple next to me throughout the match who had never been to a soccer match prior to the World Cup. The guy was asking me about our team and how good we were, along with getting clarity on some rules of the game itself.

For whatever reason, I love the pre-match ritual with the flags, the entrance of the players and the national anthems of both teams, even more so when it’s a US match. I think it has to do with all the build-up to the match coming to a head right at that moment, knowing it is only seconds away from beginning where anything can happen.

Unfortunately, the “anything” can be bad just as well as good. The Slovenians set the tone of the match not 30 seconds into it when one of their players went down like he’d been shot in the head, requiring the presence of the stretcher only to have him stand up and walk off the field when it arrived, and then re-entering the field a minute later. The guy next to me remarked that it was less about actual skills and more about who’s the best actor. This occurred probably 5 times throughout the match, until someone finally did get hurt and actually went off on the stretcher.

The first half was a disaster. 2 goals by the Slovenians, none by the US. We had a ton of wasted chances late in the first half only to have it followed up almost immediately by the 2nd Slovenian goal. I thought we were done. The way the team had been playing, I saw no chance of us coming back to tie, much less win the match. At the time, had we lost, the World Cup would’ve been over, as we were certain that England would beat Algeria and make it impossible for us to claim 2nd place. As the 2nd half started and the US made what Ryan and I thought were 2 underwhelming substitutions, along with some tactical switching of the players, things started to pick up a bit. Then Landon Donovan put home his magnificent goal into the roof of the net, and we started to believe again.

The US had a ton of momentum throughout the next 10 minutes or so, but couldn’t put home the 2nd goal, and as time wore on, it started to get more and more bleak. We were having some success passing the ball up to Altidore, but no one was getting great shots on net. Finally, the breakthrough came in the 82nd minute on a beautiful head from Altidore down to Bradley who buried it past the keeper in the back of the net. Complete delirium from the American fans, and all of a sudden there was new life. What followed after that is something that I still haven’t seen a definitive replay of, and have no idea why it didn’t count. Altidore won a gift of a free kick, which was kicked into the box and put into the net by a US player. Everyone went absolutely crazy only to discover moments later that the goalie was taking a goal kick from the box and the goal didn’t count. After a few scares late in the match, it was over and the US was still alive. As an older South African man said to me as we were leaving, "the match was Ayoba". It certainly was.

We made our way to that international landmark known as KFC to find our driver, who told us that the goal should’ve counted because he couldn’t see a foul when it was replayed on tv. On the way back to Melrose Arch, he was talking with us about how much it hurt to see South Africa going out before the 2nd round while the other teams are playing on, and that if they had only made it to the 2nd round, everyone in the country would’ve been happy. The rest of the World Cup will be very bittersweet for South Africans unless a miracle happens for them on Tuesday night.

Back at Melrose Arch, we went to a restaurant called Moyo that had been highly recommended by the Chicago people on our safari as well as the guy next to me at the match, and we sat outside in a big open area where they were showing the England-Algeria match. Thankfully, they provided us with big warm blankets; otherwise we would’ve been frozen. There were gas lamps and fire barrels scattered throughout the area as well. The place was absolutely packed as the game approached, with a small group of dedicated drunken English fans singing songs while everybody else in the area – mostly US fans, some Mexican, some Argentinian – were rooting for Algeria. A group of Hondurans passing by saw my American flag and all of them told us that the goal should’ve counted, and that they were rooting for us. We expressed our thanks, and said the same for them. The Argentines had a number of tables and were singing their own songs while waving towels or flags around in the air. It was a great atmosphere, and we got the result that we wanted with England drawing Algeria. If the US can beat Algeria on Wednesday, we go through to the next round regardless of what happens in the other match. Hopefully this is not a repeat of 2006, when we had a match against an African team that we should’ve beaten to advance to the next round, and lost.

The drive back to Pretoria was a piece of cake. Tomorrow, we see what it has to offer.

permalink written by  nucappy on June 18, 2010 from Pretoria, South Africa
from the travel blog: London and South Africa - World Cup 2010!
tagged USA, SouthAfrica, Pretoria, WorldCup and Slovenia

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Another day to relax

Pretoria, South Africa


With our place of residence established for the next few days, it was certainly nice to be able to sleep in for a change and actually have a “vacation day”. We didn’t get moving until close to 11:30 or so, and our first move was to find some internet, which we’d been lacking for a few days now. It’s pretty amazing how dependent I feel on being connected to Facebook and email, and at the same time, it’s quite liberating to not worry about what’s going on in the world (they fixed the oil spill, right? Right….?) or any other sports besides the World Cup.

After getting situated with the internet, we set off to find an African crafts market. We succeeded in finding one after asking no fewer than 3 people for directions, and paid the R2 fee to get inside (it’s basically 30 cents). For the most part, it was like any one of the Mexican Mega Malls that are found in Chicago, with lots of cheap crap for sale that wasn’t distinctly African in any way. They were even selling video game systems that looked like bootleg old-school Nintendos. The original Nintendo is 25 years old. The fact that they were selling it for more than $5 is remarkable in itself. There were a couple of African craft stores which sold some interesting items, and we picked out what we wanted before heading out. In the same market area, there was some sort of wedding show going on, consisting of young girls parading around in wedding dresses and one guy who would sing in between the girls. He was just awful. There was a sizeable crowd, and I can only hope that the people in attendance were the parents of the girls in it.

From there we went to Freedom Park, which was built in Pretoria as a symbol of the unification of South Africa following the Apartheid regime. It is a modern memorial venue, so it features many abstract manifestations of important events. We were lucky to make it in as one of the last tour groups of the day, and were taken up to the top where the tour began. I should mention that the venue is high above the city of Pretoria, and provides a fantastic view of the city. We learned that construction started on the center in 2003, and 7 years later, there is still a lot that they are building. South Africans take the unification concept extremely seriously, as it is still very fresh in their minds. Every adult in South Africa lived through the unification of the country, so it is like the US would have been following the Civil War. There is a memorial that was built by the Afrikaaners to commemorate their victory over the Zulu people in the 1940s, and as a symbol of being conciliatory and unified, it was mandated that while on Freedom Park, you can see both that memorial as well as the Union Buildings of Pretoria, where the official business of the country takes place. Our tour guide mentioned that from where the President sits, he can see Freedom Park and the Afrikaaner memorial.

We walked past the Wall of Names of every South African that had died in any conflict that is officially recognized by the country, although they have yet to engrave every name in the stones. There is an eternal flame that burns for the victims of these conflicts, as well as a symbolic final resting place commemorated by stones from every province in the country set in a circle. Along with providing phenomenal vista views of Pretoria, Freedom Park is a very tasteful and well-done memorial to all of South Africa, and one that is growing by the day. Hopefully I can return some day when it is fully finished.

After Freedom Park, we headed to the train station to determine if it was feasible to take the train to our match in Jo’burg tomorrow night between Brazil and the Ivory Coast. It was not. I think we will be hitting the casino tomorrow, which conveniently is right next to a Park-n-Ride for the stadium that we will attempt to take advantage of. We drove past Hatfield Square on the way home, which was very similar to the place we were last night in Jo’burg. Seeing as how we were all cold last night and half of us are under the weather, we decided not to go there tonight and instead went out to a restaurant where we watched the game in a more suitable climate. Unfortunately, we didn’t know that the match was being played in Pretoria tonight, and we probably could’ve gone and gotten tickets. Oh well. It was a great match, although I was pulling for Cameroon, who just didn’t have the talent to finish, and Denmark took the match 2-1.

Tomorrow is match 3 of 4, and we’ll all be attempting to make some money back at the casino beforehand. Hard to believe we’ve only been on this trip for a week. It feels like we’ve been here for 3.


permalink written by  nucappy on June 19, 2010 from Pretoria, South Africa
from the travel blog: London and South Africa - World Cup 2010!
tagged SouthAfrica, Pretoria and WorldCup

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Pictures from Pretoria - June 19th

Pretoria, South Africa




permalink written by  nucappy on June 19, 2010 from Pretoria, South Africa
from the travel blog: London and South Africa - World Cup 2010!
tagged SouthAfrica, Pretoria and WorldCup

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