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!

Return to Rustenburg

I awoke with my first real shocking hangover of the tour and it was back to our new spiritual home and the Royal Bafokeng Stadium in Rustenburg for our first “neutral” game, Aussie versus Ghana, to be honest though we weren’t really neutral as most of the crew were backing the Ghana boys, though there were a few sados supporting the Oz. The pre-match banter with thousands of Aussie fans there was gold with our “Hands up if you’ve got a point’ a particular favourite, though it all ended in great ANZSAC spirit with a joint rendition of the Home and Away theme song.

So, clad to newly acquired Ghana headband it was off to the game, soaking up the sun on a much better Rustenburg day then our game, the Aussie fans dominated the stadium and scored early, not helping my hangover, this however improved when Harry Kewell was red carded and Ghana scored from the spot. It was essentially a game of missed chances by Ghana but their fans were awesome, chanting the whole time whilst the Aussie fans just got angry and at one stage threw bottles on the field, not only out of order, but a waste of piss! Though they only serve Budweiser at the games so that is about the best thing to do with it. The game ended 1-1, so we needed a new chant as the Oz got their first point.

The Super Seven

Earliest start of the tour as we were in our open sided truck off to Kruger Park at 530am for some early morning safari action. It was a bit brisk but being an early morning cyclist in Welly I found it a bit easier than most, oh and I’m as hard as nails. Some people on the other trucks looked like they were gonna cry from the cold. Anyways, my hanging out of the truck paid dividends early as I spotted out first giraffe of the tour, a few metres off to the side of the road.

On this early morning safari the animals were a lot more active and there was much more to see, we pretty much saw everything we did the other day, ticked our big five box number 3 with a big herd of Cape Buffalo, they are supposed to be pretty nasty but they just looked like friendly cows to me! The highlight of the ride this morning was when a cheetah walked across the road in front of us, apparently stalking some impala, a breakfast kill would have been mint to see, but after hanging round for a few minutes, and no action we moved on. The cheetah is one of the hardest to spot in Kruger as there are only 200 of them, so we got pretty lucky and outside of the Big 5, they with the wild dog form the super 7. As for the elusive 2000 lions in Kruger, they again proved too hard to find today, ah well, still an awesome trip and it was great seeing all this stuff in the wild,

The 4 hour ride back to Jozi (local lingo for Joburg) was highlighted by a number of fires, which seems to be a favourite African past time, you don’t drive very far without seeing a blaze. So when we got back we figured it was Friday night in the big smoke so after a number of confusing conversations with the African locals at out hotel bar, some white guy saw me struggling and recommenced a place called Newscafe, so cab ride later we were on the lash out in Jozi for the first time, the place was packed with football supporters, Argies, Brazilians, and of course the Aussies, it was a large night of beers, cocktails and shots and even a couple of dodgy haka on request, but everyone seemed to love them and we were easily the most vocal fan base in the bar. An interesting aside, every second bird in the place seemed to be a hooker, or maybe it was the just the ones I got chatting too, anyhow I did go home alone, well apart from Rosco.

In the jungle, the mighty jungle

Another damn early start in Joburg, this time I woke up at 430, the body clock struggling to sleep in! As it was I killed the morning watching a replay of the Slovakia “win”. Then it was yet another coach ride, this time 4 hours north west to the Mpumalanga, on the doorstep of Kruger Park. Something really noticeable out in the country was the abundance of really tiny houses, not much more than shacks really, and there are always people walking up and down the road, or just hanging out.

So we basically checked in and were off in animal spotting truck and into Kruger Park..on tar sealed roads…huh? I thought we were on safari. To be fair we did venture onto the dirt roads a few times and it was not long before we were running into the wildlife. It started off slowly with lame animals like mongoose, kudu, zebras, deer (including a dead ringer for Bambi) and various other antelopes. Then just I was about to chuck it in (not being renown for my patience) we then stumbled upon a family of Rhinos out for a lazy graze, big five item number one…tick! To be honest the wildlife is bloody good at hiding and thank God we had our driver who was a dead eye dick at spotting them and the thing is it’s a damn big place. Then we came across the highlight of the drive, a young elephant wandered across the road in front of us and then the poser just hung out in front of us for five or so minutes soaking up the attention, we were literally metres away from him, big five item number two…tick. Our driver Ben then got a call over the radio and took off up the road where a traffic jam was, there apparently was a leopard in the grass, but we missed it, something I’m still a touch bitter about. Our lion pride stalking also proved fruitless. Well we got another crack on a park drive tomorrow morning, 3 ticks to go I’m not confident. On the drive back all the towns were going off, punters on the streets vuvuzelling, the bars filling up as their beloved Bafana Bafana was about to play their second game…which they got humped in, the vuvuzela being quieted for once.

Today was a fairly early coach ride up into what they call the Panorama Route for some sightseeing, the Lisbon Falls, Gods Window , Bourke’s Lucky Potholes, ok there were some nice views and all but for me the best part was that I did get some good shut eye on the bus! Don’t judge me, I hate scenery at the best of times. Now, just chillaxing watching football and drinking beer. Life is tough.

We won 1-1

Tuesday was the first day that the World Cup really started for us All White fans as we travelled to Rustenburg to watch the All Whites first game at a World Cup in 28 years.

The drinking and singing on the bus ride increased in volume as we got closer to Rustenburg and really reached a crescendo when the All Whites bus drove past us, the busload of us going nuts like drunken adoring idiots. Another highlight of the trip up was the piss stop that turned into a race to chase the bus as it took off, the boys were wheezing when they finally caught up with us, the altitude obviously taking affect.

When we got off the bus, and felt the cold wind blowing through Rustenburg I couldn’t help but feel that these Welly like conditions would make our Phoenix boys feel at home. Pre match included me doing impromptu interviews for Sky TV but they were not really award winning, basically showing off Rosco’s hair, talking to some girl about going to the toilet and interviewing Paul Brockie (Jeremy’s dad) about how great his son is, I’m sure it didn’t make the tell! Us All Whites fans comfortably won the pre match banter with a united bunch of us drowning out anything the Slovaks could chuck at us, unfortunately we were both drowned out by the vuvuzela in the ground, we all understand that this is a part of South African football but it tends to ruin the atmosphere for the foreign fans as their support is basically muted.

Well, I’m sure the dedicated amongst you who believe know what happened in the game in detail and the rest of you are aware by now…and that 93rd minute “winner” by Winston Reid is when we all started going nuts, hugging anyone in sight and we camped out in the ground for at least half an hour afterwards, suffice to say we didn’t want to leave, Rickie Herbert came out to see us and a handful of players as well, the joy on amongst all us fans didn’t really abate either, hugging continued then we descended en masse to a bar outside the ground, the weird thing was that this “bar” was a house where you walked in the front door and into the dining room and made your order, and walked out with a big bottle of Black Label for 10 rand (approx NZ$2), it really was our day. The bus ride home was long but happy, spewy and near the end, sleepy. It was a historic and special day to be at the World Cup, earn our first point at the Cup and be top equal in our group! Rustenburg is now my favourite city in South Africa.

I am now introducing a stat that we will keep track of for the duration of the tournament, that is television networks that have spoken to us on tour, it is up to 6 (TV One, TV 3, Fox Sports Australia, Sky TV, some Italian TV network and Al Jezerra).

Next stop Kruger Park.

The long haul

We are now in the African continent via HK, a trip that took about 52 hours, I know why they use sleep deprivation as a torture, cos I was going a bit la la on the lack of and interrupted sleep over the last couple of days, but after a good solid 6 hours last night I’m back!

It all started so well last Saturday with the Classic Travel lads putting on a bar tab at Auckland airport before the flight so we all headed off to the flight and sat on the tarmac for 2.5 hours with “technical difficulties”, just before the whole plane was about to riot we were off. A few complimentary bevies and some hours later we arrived to 29 degrees and just in time to watch the England v USA game in the hotel bar, a hilarious result in which the pommy fans amongst us copped plenty after Rob Green’s shocker for the USA goal.

The day in HK was spent chasing air con, a few beers and a traditional and very confusing yum cha experience. The language barrier was nailed though as the boys had a great feed with nothing that freaked us out being ordered.

12 hours after leaving HK we hit Johannesburg Monday morning, a traditional South African KFC breakfast was had (very tasty burger Nick) and then it was off to our digs where we were greeted by an awesome waiata by the whole Hotel staff (pic below), and a TVNZ crew (TV3 turned up later when we were well into the drinking, so missed the boat!), a braai and wheelbarrows full of beers as we got off the bus. The rest of the day (this was 9am!) was spent bonding over beers in the Joburg sun. Sometime during the day I managed to get the below photo with Steve Waugh (after Rosco tried to tell me to leave him alone, look how happy he is!).

My first impressions of Africa, the people seem to run on “island” time but they are incredibly friendly, very proud of their country and will bend over the backwards to help you, if NZ is half as good as them in 2011 it’ll be brilliant.

So we’re off to Rustenburg today for Slovakia, it’s a brisk winter’s day, but looking forward to an AW win!

Late update: Just arrived back, hungover as hell after our 1-1 “win”, special, special day, full post tomorrow… too boozed to post

Dodgy hair do

By popular demand here's a pic of Rosco's dodgy tribute All Whites hair do. Hanging out with him I feel much comfortable about which one of us will be assaulted (either physically or sexually) in Africa.

Itinerary and how this all began...

Welcome to my now traditional, big trip blog, this time it's the Fifa World Cup in South Africa.

Ok, I'll admit that rugby is my first love, but I am a sports fan first and foremost, have been a Liverpool fan since a kid, played social soccer as a grown up and have been a Nix season ticket holder since Day 1, so I think this rugby head qualifies (just) to attend a football World Cup.

However, it was never going to be Africa as I thought that if I was going to attend a World Cup I would prefer a South American or European jaunt, then this happened.

In my defence, before the game on that November 14, 2009 night I had asked the long suffering Ruth "If the All Whites qualify, can I go to South Africa?", and as she always does she said yeah.

So 7 months and 9 grand later I am off to South Africa on the White Noise (aka Yellow Fever during A-League season) tour, as far as I can tell comfortably the cheapest tour being run out of NZ and by the itinerary they've jacked up for us it is going to be an action packed and memorable trip supporting our boys, here's the details:

June 12 - Fly out to Hong Kong

June 13 - Fly out to Johannesburg
June 15 - All Whites v Slovakia, Rustenburg

June 16,17,18 - 3 day Kruger Park Safari
June 19 - Ghana v Australia, Rustenburg

June 20 - All Whites v Italy, Nelspruit

June 21 - Spain v Honduras, Johannesburg

June 22 - Sun City

June 23 - Ghana v Germany, Johannesburg

June 24 - All Whites v Paraguay, Polokwane

June 26 - Fly out to Hong Kong

June 28 - Fly out to Auckland