The End

So the trip of life time is over, our last day is Jozi was spent half the day recovering, half the day with a flying visit to Soweto (Nelson's house, Valikazi Street, Hector Pietersen memorial) with Angus and then getting on the chop again...by accident, the cocktails were $6-7 enzed so it would have been rude not to. So we left Africa on Saturday, via HK (another large one out in Lan Kwai Fong, a great way to finish the tour and my best night's sleep, 7 hours!) and have just arrived home, the perfect time to reflect on the highlights and lowlights, in no particular order...

Highlights

• Winston Reid's unlikely "winner" in Rustenburg,
• The bus rides all over the Gauteng and Mpumalanga,
• The killer buffet breakfasts,
• Leading against Italy,
• The people of South Africa,
• The cheap cost of essentials on tour (food and booze),
• Leading against Italy,
• Celebrating as one after the Slovakia and Italy games,
• Finding out that South Africa wasn't really that dangerous,
• The shebeen in Rustenburg,
• The banter with the Aussies before their game with Ghana,
• Getting a local's view of Jozi with Angus, and
• The thrill of the chase in Kruger Park.

Lowlights

• The perpetuated myth that lions exist in Africa, they don't,
• The bus rides all over the Gauteng and Mpumalanga,
• A vuvuzela in my ear during the Ghana v Germany game,
• Soft penalty for Italy's equaliser,
• The fact there were no rumbles on tour, everyone got on, wtf?
• Lack of sleep,
• Budweiser headaches,
• My makarapa being flogged iff my head in the Paraguay game, and
• I just realised I never ate one of the famed SA steaks.

All in all the highlights easilt outweigh the lowlights and after this trip I am really considering Brazil in 2014, Tas will be seven then so I'll take her along so she can look after me )and maybe her mum) and the All Whites will be ranked in the top 10 in the world with a real shot of winning it all. Sounds like a plan.

Can we?

There was a real buzz around the breakfast table this morning as the punters rolled in preparing for the bus trip and game in Polokwane, for the All Whites date with destiny, against Paraguay. Personally I was not that confident that we could hold Paraguay, as I think they were the best team in our group, but if we scunged an early one as against Italy, who knows.

There was a real good party atmos on the bus ride up, the chanting and the drinking going hand in hand, we got to Polokwane a good two hours early giving us a good opportunity to get in to banter with the Paraguayan fans, I took great delight in calling them Uruguayan, don’t think they got the humour…ha ha ha.

We had our best seats on of the tourney so far, sitting pitch side, great being so close but not necessarily the best viewing spot, and we were humming before the game, funnily enough I also bumped into my old flatmate Mauricio at the game too, he was traveling around the cup with a few mates, never thought I’d bump into someone in Polokwane.

I thought the game was well controlled by Paraguay and our struggle to break down their defence showed in the final 0-0 score, result that meant they topped the group and went through with Slovakia after they tipped up the Italians. A highlight for our tour party was when Jeremy Brockie got on as his old man Paul (though known on tour purely as Jeremy Brockie’s dad or JBD) is a thoroughly good bastard and it was great for him to see his boy get some game time at the World Cup.

Two weeks ago I would have been stoked with undefeated World Cup, but post match I was a bit gutted cos we got so close, but still immensely proud of our boys, they showed resilience and team unity that some of these teams full of prima donnas could learn much from. We’re going home but a champion effort from them.

The fact the All Whites looked devastated was a good sign too, as they knew they were very close to progressing, as per usual we hung around and cheered our boys on post match. However the cops had different ideas and pretty quickly moved us on, it wasn’t aggressive or anything but they were pretty insistent we had to leave.The bus ride home was celebratory and in high spirits and I think everyone on that tour realized how privileged and lucky we were to have watched this tournament live, I hit the wall before we arrived back in Jozi and tried to carry on when we got home but whilst the mind was willing the body was not.

Doing Jozi local style

Today we hung out with Angus, a Jozi local who happens to a workmate of Rosco’s back in Welly, he is over here to see his family and some footie. It was a fun day out getting a local’s take on the place, he drove us through Hillbrow, which is the badlands in downtown Jozi, still considered to be a dangerous place even during the day.

Since we hadn’t drunk enough on tour, we then went on a brewery tour at SA Brewery, it was an impressive tour though it took itself a bit seriously almost comparing the brewing of beer as one of the key parts in the creation and development of mankind, something we found hilarious! Drinking the traditional African home brew was interesting too, can’t remember the proper African name, but it’s also known as “shake shake”.

I had been mentioning to Angus that I could not find a NZ makarapa (supporters had made from a hard hat), and lo and behold he said he had seen them at the fan fest across the road from the brewery, so off we toddled and Rosco and I scored one each at half price, as shown in the pic below at Soccer City. We also had another interview with tv there, this time with some Mexican telly guys asking us about World Cup keepers, I blew it by talking up the Ghana keeper when I meant the Nigerian one…racist! Rosco sang Pastons praises.

Next stop was for a bit of culture and the Apartheid Museum, and interesting look into the development, resistance and eventual demise of the regime. The museum is really well set out and tells the story well. Well worth the visit.

Was a god day cruising around with Angus, getting the local’s perspective and getting introduced to some local kai and lingo.

That night was our one and only visit to Soccer City, the 90,000 seat stadium that will host the final, to watch Ghana play Germany. The arena is huge and very very impressive, it was a great to be there in spite of the game which was pretty uninspiring but did feature a cracking goal by ze Germans, who won 1-0. Quiet night, big game tomorrow!

Totty, fans and Chris Wood's mum!

A Day in the Sun

Bus ride up to Sun City today, a resort/casino place a couple hours up the road, the casino itself is pretty mediocre as far as casinos go, but it looks like a place that would go off in summer when the place would be heaving.

Highlights of the day though…

- Reptile Park on the way up where we saw far too many snakes for my liking, as well as some Pommy nutter , David Jones who is setting a world record by staying in a room filled with over 200 snakes for 120 days, that gave me the creeps as well,

- Crocodile sanctuary at Sun City which houses thousands of crocs, the biggest of which is called Arnie, he is 850kg, 4.7m long and 80 years old, and by all accounts the other crocs don’t mess with him, that's him below,

- A quiet bevie at the Gary Player golf course (ranked no.1 in South Africa) , watching the hackers slap their shots into the water at the front of the 9th green,

- Seeing the monkeys flogging food from a 1st floor room left open, they weren’t fussy either coffee, sugar, croissants, they ate it all, till the Primate Control boy with his paintball gun turned up.

Day ended watching more footie over a few quiets for a change.

Back to the scene of the crime

Woke up this morning to some of the punters from the night before still ‘celebrating’ the AW result v Italy, there are some keen drinkers on this tour!

Was a leisurely start to the day, we wandered down to a local shopping centre for a look around, and I loaded up on pressies for the kids back home, contrary to what you hear the place is not obviously dangerous and I am yet to feel unsafe.

Late in the afternoon we headed to Ellis Park to watch Spain play Honduras. The bus ride took us through what is apparently one of the more dangerous parts of Jozi, and John, our bus driver said he had been shot here a few years back. A few of the punters on the bus were a bit nervous as the traffic crawled through but the reputation did not stop lots of the punters hanging out the windows buying knock off supports stuff from the multitude of hawkers.

As soon as I got to Ellis Park, I immediately felt uncomfortable being at the scene of the 1995 robbery by the Springboks, there were a few Africans sitting behind us and I talked up the poisoning of our boys which they still think is a conspiracy theory. Ellis Park is an impressive arena, but I still hated it.

Spain had to win after their shock loss to the Swiss in their first game and they should have won by plenty, and boy do they play some pretty football. Rosco was happy his boy David Villa got a couple goals (the first possibly goal of the tournament so far) as he has invested heavily on him to be the golden boot, but Villa broke his heart when he sprayed a penalty wide for his hattrick. 2-0 final.

All in all a good night out at Ellis Park, the games where you are not really supporting one of the teams are more relaxed and I got into the spirit by making Stu take photos of me with other fans, the fact that most of them are hot girls is purely coincidental, unfortunately I can't get them off Stu's camera at present but for the deviants amongst you, they will be posted!

The Italian Job

For a change it was another long bus ride, this time up to Nelspruit and the Mbombela Stadium, to watch the us against the defending World Champion and 5th ranked team in the world, Italy. To be honest I was not impressed by Italy in their first game and I was really talking up our chances to all and sundry on the bus ride, though my 1-0 win to us was perhaps a touch optimistic.

We almost missed the start of the game as our bus got turned away at the stadium initially, and there were some angry punters on the bus, as I was Rosco dawdled and still got out possy just as our anthem started, perfect timing some may stay, then when Smeltzy scored in the 7th minute, pandemonium ensued, this was followed by some real anger when the penalty was given, and some nervous moments as the Eyeties dominated, it felt they had a million corners, the shirts came off at the 80 minute mark, and we roared our boys home. How close was Chris wood’s strike too?

The final whistle was euphoric and I’ll admit I was a touch overwhelmed by it all, more man and the occasional girl love, and is now tradition we all came together as one fan base and cheered on our boys for half an hour or more after, this time all the players came over, many of them throwing kit into the crowd, and Nelsen had had this dude who kept on following him around and would leave him alone who looked strangely looked like John Key. An amazing, amazing result.

The 4 hour bus ride back was long as we had run out of piss, but after a sleep a few of us hit the hotel bar, and finally the pillow at 2am. Tracey (you may know here as the topless chick who we understand is famous in NZ now, oh and I’ve set up a trademe auction sell her bra, auction: 298608639) is the last one still awake as I write, pictured below with me post match.

Apologies for the lack of good game photos on this blog but I’m getting the game photos with the guy with the best camera on tour, they will form a photo book when I get back.

Celebrate this “win” NZ!