This is a journal I kept on our trip to South Africa (It's pretty long).
Click here if you want to see a BUNCH of pictures (more than 400) - sorry I haven't had time to make comments on all of them.
Wed June 9th - Friday June 11th We woke up with the kids that morning and hung out for a little while. We tried to finish what breakfast food we had in the house. A little later that morning we got a call that Greg’s Grandfather had had a stroke. Of course many things went through our heads about whether we should go or stay or whatever else. After talking later to Greg’s parents we decided to go ahead. The 4 of us went to Freebirds for lunch because I wanted some Mexican food before we left.
We went to drop Kasey off at Grandma and Pops house. Kasey fell asleep on the way there. This really upset me because I didn’t want her to be asleep and wake up with us gone for 2 weeks. She actually woke up a little later so I got to tell her goodbye. Fortunately or unfortunately she’s to young to understand. I know she will be taken good care of, but it’s still hard to leave. Then we took Landon and Lady to Grammy and Gramps house. Landon and Gramps took us to the airport. Landon liked seeing all of the airplanes like the kids usually do. I think Landon was excited that Lady was staying with him, and he was excited about having fun. I think he’ll have enough activities and fun time with the Grandparents that he will be ok.
Things went smoothly at DFW. We had a drink in the lounge, got to talk to a couple who had been to South Africa a few years earlier, went and got some water and got on the plane. We had an 8 ½ hour flight to Madrid on American that went pretty smoothly. Greg didn’t sleep any and I only got about 2 hours.
Once in Madrid we had a 16 hour lay over. We locked our luggage into a locker, and went into town for the day. We got to eat ham sandwiches, chirizo, potatoes bravos, shrimp with butter garlic sauce, some Spanish wine, & sangria . We saw a few other guys that were doing the same thing we were. We also went to a museum that had a lot of EU paintings and some sculptures. We went to a botanical gardens that wasn’t great, but sort of relaxing. We went to a couple plazas – Plaza Mayor. We stopped in a couple places that were big into bull fighting – I am not a fan, but won’t go into that.
After getting a late bite to eat we headed back to the airport. Some people had told us to wrap our luggage in cellophane to prevent theft and rummaging through your luggage. We did this. At check in our flight seemed ok, but as we were getting through security the board showed that our flight was delayed by 2 hours. This means we had to be there until 3:30am. Luckily we were able to go to the Iberia lounge. Doug slept for about 3 hours, Greg tried since he didn’t sleep on the first flight, and I watched the stuff and watched a movie.
By the time 3am came around and we boarded we were pretty tired, but glad to be getting on board. Of course just about everyone on the flight was going there for world cup. We had a very diverse croud. There were people from US, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, England, Haiti, Brazil, and some others as well.
Needless to say we slept most of the 10 hour flight from Madrid to JoBurg.
Once we got to South Africa and through customs, the travel group we went with was there to meet us and take us to the hotel. It took a while to get to the hotel because the driver didn’t know where the hotel was. We were pretty tired, but showed and watched the first world cup game between South Africa and Mexico – they ties 1-1.
Saturday June 12thWe got up that morning and went to breakfast, and then got ready for the day. Doug came over to our hotel and we went and walked around the mall some. We got local sim cards in the mall.
We had lunch at an outdoor restaurant outside the mall. Gathering near where we were eating was a group of Algerians in full dress. They were all singing/chanting together. After lunch we had our picture with them.
When we got back to the room about 2pm we started getting ready and we got a text that the bus at Doug’s hotel was now leaving at 2:30pm. Our original email said the transfer bus to the game was supposed to be 3 hours before the game, and then we got an update email that we were supposed to leave 5 hours prior to the game which was 3:30pm. We had no communication that we were supposed to leave at 2:30pm, but we decided to get ready for the game and go downstairs just in case. We got down there and they said that they wanted to leave at 2:30pm now because of all of the traffic. The lady that was in charge was trying to call everyone, but she wasn’t getting ahold of anyone. We decided to go sit in the bus to wait. Then about an hour later (3:30pm) everyone was finally in the bus and we were leaving. We had to go pick up 2 other people from another hotel. By the time we got them it was almost 4pm when we left the area.
As we were getting closer we Rachel (the lady helping to get us there) said that they were supposed to take us somewhere and we would have to take a bus to the game. We weren’t to happy about that. The traffic close to the game was bad and it took us a long time to get to the parking lot to catch the bus. Once we finally got off of the bus it was around 7:15-7:30pm. I still can’t believe that it took us over 3 hours to get there. Anyway, Greg really had to go to the bathroom so he went to the outhouse, and then we got in line for the buses. We barely got on a bus. They closed the door and Greg barely fit in the bus it was so packed. It took 10 minutes or so to get to the stadium. We got off the bus and went straight into the stadium. Of course I had to go to the bathroom in a not very clean trailer with soap and no water. Then we went into stadium to get our seats. Because it took so long to get there we didn’t get to eat dinner, or hang out and experience the crowd and atmosphere. We had on our US jerseys, cowboy hat, and Greg had his cowbell and USA flag he wore on his back. We also both had USA scarves. USA played England in this game and the score was 1:1. The US goal was a howler. Dempsey kicked the ball to the England Goalie (Green) and he tried to catch it but this it just kind of fell out of his hands and went into the goal. Good for the US, but pretty bad play.
We have a tradition of trading scarves with people from the teams we play in World Cup matches. I asked a couple England fans to trade and a couple people said no. Down on the main floor I asked another older gentleman if he would trade and he said yes. I thanked him and asked if we could get a picture. He said yes if I would give him a kiss. With a kiss on the cheek, a picture and an England scarf we were off to the buses. We had to ask multiple people where to find the 104 buses. Once we finally found them there were about 15 buses lined up. Most of them were already full and closed. We finally found one and were able to sit down. It was about 11pm when we got on the bus. It took us about 45 minutes to get back to the parking lot which was ~10 minutes away. Once everyone on our bus back to Rosebank was there we got in and tried to leave. This was about midnight. It took us another 45 minutes to an hour to get out of the parking lot because there were about 10 lanes trying to go into 1 exit. Even with our bus driving being somewhat aggressive we didn’t get back to the hotel until about 3:30am. It was like day tripping College Station for a night football game!
Sunday June 13thWe traveled to Capetown via airplane – British Airways. It was about a 2 hour flight. No issues. We wrapped our luggage like was recommended, but it seemed that most people didn’t do this. We got to our hotel – Blue Horizon which is really like a Bed and Breakfast. It’s very nice and Karen the innkeeper was very helpful and friendly. Our balconies overlooked the Indian Ocean, we had beer, Champaign, some candies and jerky waiting for us in our room.
That evening we went down the street for dinner to a place called the Tavern. It was a local restaurant where the official England soccer team band was eating. They were fun, and sang about everything. They ordered food and beer singing, talked to us singing etc. We had a good time and the food was great. We really enjoyed the Calamari. When we left we smelled like firewood smoke from the fire that was at the restaurant. This is much better than cigarette smoke. All in all we had a really good time.
Monday June 14thIt was a rainy day in Capetown so we decided to go wine tasting. Doug had gotten some recommendations for places to go and Karen had recommended a place for lunch near them so we took off for the day. We started off at Rustenburg winery. It was very nice, the guy came out with umbrellas to bring us in and there was covered parking for the car. It was very nice inside, and the people were very friendly. We tasted a couple wines and liked a few of them, but weren’t going to buy to ship them. We bought one to drink while we were there and got the way to order their wine in the US. Once of the ladies there made us lunch reservations, which was nice.
From there we took off down the street to Takata winery. It was a little more casual. They had a nice fireplace which we took a couple pictures at. We tried some of their red wines including one called a Pinotage that we all liked. The story of Pinotage was that in South Africa they had the grape and wine, and they had to trade grain (I think) for the ability to keep the Pinotage in South Africa. We all bought a Pinotage to take home and we bought another bottle to share while we were in Capetown.
Off to lunch at Delheim. We sat in a cave for lunch which also happened to have a TV to watch the game. We had a good lunch and then a wine tasting there. They had a spicy wine that Juan really liked called Vera Cruz Shiraz. He ended up getting a bottle because they don’t sell it out of the US. We were there for about 3 hours but it didn’t seem like it.
After that we went to what was reported to be one of the better wineries for red wine. It was called Kanonkop. Marissa and I found some local paintings of South African kids playing soccer. We decided that we wanted to get them. We liked the wine but didn’t buy any there.
On the way, back to the Blue Horizon we hit a pot whole pretty hard and ended up with a flat tire. It was still raining and we were all out of the car helping to change the tire. We got back on the road and realized that there was a second flat tire. We were able to get back to Blue Horizon, but weren’t going anywhere else. We had thought about trying to get tickets to the World cup game in Capetown that night, but it was cold and rainy and with the flat tires we decided to not even try. Juan, Marissa, Greg and I got a taxi ride from Jacques (Doug stayed at the Blue Horizon to wait for Hertz). We got in the car and said we wanted to watch the game and eat food, but didn’t really want to go to the Tavern again (since we ate there last night). He said there were some noisy Brits at a local place, but warned us about them. We told him we’d been around many crazy Brits and it sounded good to us. Jacques said he wanted to come in with us and see the expression on his friends faces when he brings in several Americans. We walked in a caused a ruckus, and they made some. Then they asked us to sit with them. We pulled up an extra table for us and everything. We had some fish and chips, several beers, watched a pretty good game (Italy/Paraguay), and had interesting company. Come to find out the main guy was Jacques partner Craig, and several others were long time supporters of England. The ladies had a very good time and enjoyed dancing and hanging around. Craig kept playing tricks on people including throwing water on them. He got Greg on one and splashed water all over him off a tray. Greg then poured the tray of water on Craig. Needless to say we had a good time. Luckily Doug was able to get a new car from Hertz so all was good.
Tuesday June 15thWe decided to spend the day at Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point. We had a good lunch at Cape Point, and then took the lift to out over the water. The views were great. You could really see the power that the ocean has. There was an area out in the ocean had some turbulence which we assumed was a rock or sucken ship. This is where the Lusitania sank and we think there was something out there to show where it is. There was a small animal (clawless otter) that we joked was after Marissa – we called it a rat. The lift broke and so we walked back down the mountain. It wasn’t to far. Good thing it wasn’t Table Mountain.
Then we drove to Cape of Good Hope (the most south western part of Africa, but not the most southern part). On the way we saw a few Ostriches on the side of the road. There were several signs for Baboons, and we saw 2 on the way but figured there would be more so we didn’t get pictures. There was a lot of seaweed out and I’d never seen that there was more than the part that floats on the top. There is a long hollow cylinder that connected to the floor and then the loose part that floats on the top of the water. We took some good pictures and watched the waves crash against the shoreline for a little while. One the way out we saw several ostriches and some large Springbok. I was sad that we had not seen any more baboons as we exited park. Then just down the street there were several baboons including a baby. There were even a few baboons were playing (male and female playing), and the one on the back looked up at our car like hello some privacy here. Anyway we got to see our baboons.
We had scheduled a Wine Cave dinner that night at 7pm, and by the time we got out of the Cape of Good Hope we basically had to go straight to dinner even though we were a little dingy. The dinner was very nice and there were some wine paring that I took part in (I think I was the only one).
Wednesday June 16thWe decided to spend the day in Capetown. We went down to the waterfront to look around. We found some shops to buy some local things in and then we went to town in the Fifa store. We bought a duffle bag at the Fifa store to take stuff back home that we bought. Then we had lunch at Ocean Basket and watched Chile/Honduras game on the big screen.
Then we drove down the coast to Camps Bay. There was a nice beach around sunset that we walked on for a little while. The tide was coming in and we had to back up pretty good a few times to not get wet. The water didn’t feel to cold, but we just touched it with our hands so who knows.
That night we went to a restaurant that was recommended to Doug – Bayside Café. Dinner was good and Juan tried some Springbok that I tried. It was pretty good. South Africa was playing that night, but we decided to head back after dinner to avoid the traffic. Probably a good thing since they lost 3-0 to Uruguay that night.
Thursday June 17thIt was supposed to be clear on Thursday which is has to be to see stuff on Table Mountain. We had breakfast early for us (8am, we’d been meeting for breakfast at 9am), checked out, said goodbye and thanks to Karen, and headed to Table Mountain. Of course since this was the first clear day in several days there were many people there. We waited in line for tickets probably 30-45 minutes, and then it was pretty quick once we got tickets to get up. The lift could hold 65 people and rotated 360 degrees as you went up and down. We spent some time walking around at the top (1067 meters high) and taking pictures. You could see the waterfront and Capetown as well as the other side where there were some more mountains and the Camps Bay beach. The views were amazing. We had a quick lunch up there before coming back down and heading to the airport.
That afternoon we flew back to JoBurg. That night we went to Melrose Arch for dinner at Moyo and watched a game on the big screen. We ate outside and nearly froze, but we survived with a fire near by and blankets. We also had a few bottles of Pinotage wine
Friday June 18thWe woke up a little early so that we could do a little shopping at the African market right by our hotel. We had an early breakfast and headed to the market to find some gifts. We also went to a camping store to get some pants long johns because it was pretty cold.
When we got back we got dressed with our layers ready for the game and went down early. We had heard at breakfast that they tried to leave early for another game as well so we assumed this would be the case. Of course not. It was 12:30 when they were supposed to pick us up and the bus still wasn’t there. Juan had brought by some face paint so we spent some timing doing that. We did USA on one side and stars on the other in red, white and blue. Of course we had our hats on. We had USA jerseys and scarves as well. Greg did wear his flag, but will now be retired. At least there were other US fans waiting for the bus. Anyway, we got on our bus but Juan, Marissa and Doug were still waiting for them. It took us about 20 minutes to get to the game and we were one of the first buses there. We got out and decided to have a beer and wait for the other guys. We took some pictures, had a couple beers, and talked to the tour guy from our bus for a little while. Once they got to the bus parking we took some pictures, of all of us. Then we headed in. Of course he had people wanting pictures with us. There were also several Mexican TV stations that wanted to interview Juan and Marissa. We walked around some, got some hot dogs to eat, Doug exchanged his scarf with a Slevenia. We got to our seats which were in the shade so it was chilly. Not horrible, but it was good that we had our long johns on. Our section had some Americans, but mainly it was South Africans. The guy next to us was South African and had a guitar with a USA flag. He was VERY excited to be there, and took several pictures including some with us. Overall the game was pretty good, but the US got some bad calls including a late one to disregard a winning goal. The use was down 2-0 at half time and came back, but wasn’t able to win it because of the penalty and not being to finish in other instances.
Saturday June 19thWe got up early again to do a little shopping and then we got picked up by Rachel (the tour lady from our first game trip to Rustenburg) to head to Soweto township. We started out by going to a poor part of town. Rachel basically dropped us off with a tour guide who took us through the streets. There were several kids around playing soccer and looking cute and asking for money. In this area, they basically have a faucet for everyone to take a bath, only have overhead street lights (no other power), and only about 50% of them have jobs. The kids have to walk 30 minutes to get to schools. We went into one of ladies houses. She lives in the very small “shack” for lack of a better word with 2 rooms with 6 total family members. They had 1 bed. They did have a small TV powered by car batteries. The kids were very trained to be nice, ask questions, and try to get money for pictures, soccer balls etc. The tour guide told us he would give the community 70% of what we gave him. Who knows.
After that we went to a church where towns people used to have meetings with the church as a cover. There were bullet holes in the ceiling. It was a catholic church with some pictures upstairs of the history. I bought a necklace from the vendors outside of the church. I found one I really liked and they were so thankful that I bought something.
After that we went to the small museum for Nelson Mandela which was at one of his old houses. His second wife still has a house in the same area which is known as Beverly Hills of Soweto.
That night we got back and just had dinner by the hotel at Nino’s – We watched the Denmark/Cameroon game.
Sunday June 20thWe left Johannesburg today for our Safari. We flew to Hoedspruit which was about an hour or hour and a half flight. We took South African Airlines. The plane was a small prop plane that was completely full. They had to weigh our luggage and everything. When we got on the flight they offered us a small bottle of water, and then offered us juice. After we took off they offered us a mystery snack in a brown paper bag. The snack was a bag of Lays chips (Marissa was happy (she works for Frito Lay), a cookie and a small candy bar. In addition to this they offered drinks (free wine, beer, whatever). I had a bottle of red wine (it was Merlot, but ok for airplane wine), and Greg had a Windhoch light beer. Later we learned that Juan got 2 beers. I told him Greg would be jealous (he had gotten one for him and Marissa and just drank both). Juan was nice enough to share his second one with Greg.
When we got to the airport, we got off the plan on the tarmac, and were looking where to go. There wasn’t really an airport. It was a roofed little building with a runway and a little more concrete for the plane to park. We could see all of the people waiting to transport people to the safari’s (holding up names) from getting off the plane. Once we got there we found out guy, walked through the very small building out to wait for the tractor and luggage holder to bring the luggage around. We needed to wait for the van to take Doug, Marissa and Juan to their safari because it was late. We decided to have a drink and an ice cream while waiting.
On the way to our Safari, we had to pay an entrance fee into the park, and then we saw several animals along the way. Our drivers name was Remember. We saw Zebras, Wildabeast, Apola, and a hippo in the pond right by our lodge.
We were at the Royal Legand Lodge in the Timivati private reserve. We got checked in and they said they were serving lunch and we’d be leaving on safari at 3:30pm (it was about 3pm when we checked in). We got our stuff we were going to take to the Safari and headed down to the place where lunch was to see where it was. When we got there the staff was introducing themselves to us, but there were 2 giraffes just off the where you eat. We were amazed. Needless to say we had not gone on a safari yet and we had already seen a lot.
We were in short sleeves and pants at this time when we started the safari, but a couple people commented that it will get cold so we brought our jackets. We started out and saw some Apolla (they are like deer, and there are many of them in this area). A little later we saw Cape Buffalo (one of the big5). There were a whole bunch of them including several babies. A few of the babies were drinking their mom’s milk. They drink the milk from the back between the legs because they are on the move so much. We also saw several birds and a small monkey at a top of the tree (looking out for lions and other cats). We stopped around sunset to have a drink. They brought out of a cooler basically a full bar – several kinds of cold beer, wine, several small bottles of liquer. We had some French people with us that all drank Wisky, Greg and I had beer. They also had some dried fruit, kind of chip things, and some chicken liver. I tried it all, but don’t think chicken liver is one of my favorites. The French people really liked it. Our guide (Fanni) said that the other group had found some Rhinos and wanted to know if we wanted to stay on our break or go find them. We all wanted to go find them. There were 3 Rhinos – mommy, baby and Daddy. The mom was very protective of the baby and got a little tired of us, but I think we got some cool pictures. It’s neat to see them in the nature and how they react to things.
Monday June 21stWe had to get up at 5:15am to get ready for a 6am departure of the safari. It was definitely worth it. We were leaving the lodge and the other lady said she thought she saw a warthog or something. It ended up being the baby hippo that stays by the lodge. We got to see him walk across the street and into the water. Unfortunately we didn’t get good pictures or video, but it was cool to see. We were out for about and hour and had not seen much. Then we got a call on the radio that they other group had found lions. It was really cold. We had every long sleeve item that we brought on, long johns, scarves, hats, gloves, blankets. It was pretty cold, but in the open breeze of the jeep it was really cold. Fanni said we’re going fast to see some lions. We didn’t complain. On the way we passed several giraffes and Greg saw a male Waterbok – we just kept going to get to the lions. What we saw was 2 grown female lions with about 10-12 cubs. They had killed a cape buffalo and were eating it. It was amazing to watch. Some of the cubs would play with each other. Fanni said that when they are eating, none of them are nice to each other including the grown ones. We heard a few growls, but nothing serious broke out. A little ways away was a grown male lion with two cubs. They were just hanging out after their meal. We got pretty close to all of them which was pretty cool.
I was very happy to have seen the lions, Fanni said they haven’t seen them in about a week. Not long after that we saw elephants. They were amazing. We saw about 15-20 of them including a couple young ones. Fanni says that most of the babies are born in Dec/Jan timeframe. The elephants were drinking water, one of the babies was drinking it’s mother’s milk, some were eating leaves, and one was rubbing it’s side on a tree. Several of them came walking very close to us. It was crazy being right in the middle of them. Fanni said they usually travel in about 60-70 but we still got to see several of them. Some of them are very big.
After that we saw 2 Apolla males that were fighting for dominance, but they were also making a nasel sound that was telling other Apolla that something was close and to go the other way. We didn’t see anything, but Fanni says that normally means that there is a lion or leopard near when they make that sound.
We also saw several Warthogs including a baby and we saw a female Waterbok going across the street.
Tuesday June 22ndWe had to get up at 5:15am again to go on Safari. We saw the hippo walking along the main walkway on our way to the Range Rovers. We didn’t see much else that morning. They are tracking different lions, but they went onto someone else’s property so we had to stop tracking them. We did get to see the hyena though.
After safari we went down to eat breakfast. Then we went back to the room to take a shower. There was an outdoor shower that we considered but decided not to
Then we went down to the eating area and hung out hoping to see some more animals, but we didn’t.
We left at noon to go back to the airport, and we flew back to Johannesburg. We had about 5 hours there so we plastic wrapped our bags, got an assessment for what VAT we could get back, and then went and got in line to check in. There was a whole group of Brazilians in front of us for our flight. Once they go through the line they started singing. The South Africa game was on, and you could tell when someone scored because the whole airport started screaming and blowing Vuvuzelas. We went and got our VAT back (of course minus 25% fee), and did a little shopping.
I think we were pretty tired because we both slept most of the flight from JBurg to Madrid. We had another 5 hours in Madrid. We spent most of it in the lounge. I slept some more and Greg played on the computer. We went a little early to the gate because there is extra security to go through. We had joked earlier that if they asked us if we wanted 1 upgrade who would take it. Of course, they called our name and they had 1 seat in business class and we had to choose. I told Greg he could take it and happy fathers day. Luckily he was nice enough to bring me some ice cream from business class.
We had a great trip. We really enjoyed the experience, the people in South Africa, Cape Town, the games, and the Safari. I hope that when the kids are older we could take them back for a safari. Who knows!
