Much attention has been given to the price gouging going on by airlines and hotels in South Africa.

iAfrica had this great piece on airfare hikes. It is great to see that smaller lines like Kulula (also a wireless carrier for those interested in getting a phone plan) and Mango potentially offering a lower cost alternative.

The time is near when we will find out which cities our teams will be playing in next summer. The draw will be televised live on ESPN2 at 11:00 AM CT (12PM ET/10AM MT/9AM PT) and also on FIFA.com. I'll be watching at Sweetwater, so please join me there if you can.

FIFA has begun to crack down on what it considers illegal ticket sales.

I saw this article from FIFA.com and thought it was an interesting possibility. With airfares between Cape Town and Johannesburg running between $500 and $700, how much worse could it be to stay in another country for part of the trip?

As I suggested in an earlier post, I think it is a good idea to wait until after the draw on December 4 to buy plane tickets for the trip. As it currently stands, flights on Delta from Minneapolis to Johannesburg vary as much as $800 depending on departure and return dates. I don't even know if Johannesburg is where I want to be yet, so I'll wait until the groups are determined on the 4th.

I've got a lot of updates in the works and they'll be posting in the next few days. For today, however, I wanted to direct you to a great travel guide put together by Sports Illustrated writer Grant Wahl. There are tons of good bits in there.

Here's a nice nugget

Cities like Durban expecting a shortage of beds. The article refers to this mysterious marketing company called MATCH Hospitality that FIFA has partnered with to...uh, to do things.

The second round FIFA sale has come and gone. I had little hope of getting any tickets from it, and today I got cofirmation from FIFA that I had not.

At this point I am thinking the best strategy will be to try to get tickets through US Soccer, and then use the remaining two FIFA sales phases as backup plans. As a last resort, we can always try to buy tickets from scalpers at the stadiums.