I just remembered a moment from the trip that still makes me laugh. We were staying at Sabie Backpackers in the town of Sabie, near Kruger National Park. The staff there are really friendly, but strangely wigged out or high or something. They would always seem totally engaged in anything you were saying to them, and if you made any sudden gestures they would jump and gesticulate as though they had just seen a unicorn.

Saturday, July 2
I made it to Oddball's Camp and they set me up alone in one of the two person tents. There's an adjacent bathroom with an outdoor shower. The whole thing is up on stilts above the water, with a dirt path leading from the dining area.

Wednesday, June 30
To my surprise, the Maun airport has free wifi. I just booked a three night safari trip to Oddball's Camp in the Okavango Delta, so this will be my last contact with the outside world until I get back on Saturday. (Correction: we flew off before I could post this so it will not appear until Saturday some time)

Tuesday, June 29
When I planned my trip to SA, I left the tail end open because there was no way to be sure how well our team would do in the competition. I set my return flight for July 4 to allow for attendance to a quarterfinal match if we made it. We didn't, so now I have a week to fill with some other activities.

I had tried to find a way to return home early, because honestly I am sick of South Africa and I want to be home. But there are no flights available, or what is available would cost $2,000 or more.

Landon Donovan's late goal on Tuesday to put the US at the top of the group set off a celebration in the stands. For a good hour, a few hundred US fans partied in the stands and out on the concourse. It reminded me of the scene in 2002 after the US made it through to the second round, but this time there were several times as many Americans in attendance.

I was really looking forward to driving in SA when I arrived here. I've never rented a car in another country before and the driving on the left side of the road made it sound more fun. Thrifty Rentals gave us a Renault Megane Scenic five-seater to drive for the first week.

It didn't take much to get used to the right hand drive and left hand shifting. My first drive took me from the airport to Pretoria by freeway and then out to Magaliesburg on a free flowing highway.

The logistics of getting to Ellis Park stadium in Johannesburg were much simpler than with Rustenburg. The stadium is near the city center, and about an hour and fifteen minutes drive from our lodge. Again we had the lodge owners shuttle us to and from, and this time we chose a bar called Pete's Pub as the rendezvous point.

Pete's is within a few blocks of the stadium. It turned out to be the location of choice for a lot of US fans. The place was packed and the parking lot out front was also full.

Kruger National Park is home to many of the exotic African animal species I can think of. It almost seems too exotic to real to think that I would ever be in a place where they live in the wild. Driving through the park in our rental Renault, we saw giraffes, hippos, rhinos, elephants, sable antelope, buffalo, wildebeast, warthogs, zebras, kudus, eagles, storks, and guinea hens. The big cats--lions, cheetahs, and leopards--were more elusive and we were not fortunate to see them. But driving the paved roads through the park made it seem all too easy.

The Royal Bafokeng Stadium in Rustenburg is actually located outside of the city on tribal land and the only way to get there was by shuttle buses provided by the World Cup organizers. The surrounding area was said to be closed off to cars, but when we got there it was a chaotic mess of people and cars. As the evening progressed, more and more people crowded in front of the entrance, waiting for the gate to open so they could go inside.

I had planned on having a phone with internet access during the trip, but so far my technology experience has been a comedy of errors. I've had a battery charger fail, my phone card didn't work for the first couple of days, and electrical outlets are hard to come by. Internet access is exceedingly difficult to find. I've finally figured everything out though, and today I've even gotten internet access on my phone via the cellular provider MTN. I should be able to post more updates here on the blog now.