Week 19 (14th – 20th of June)
We are now in the second week of the World Cup 2010 tournament hosted in South Africa and we are luckily in Cape Town which means we are amidst the buzz of it all! Everyone is still excited about the games and some South Africans are even evolving into proper soccer fans. In contrast to Europe, people here (SA) watch rugby and cricket rather and hardly watch much soccer. But since the World Cup started you hear more and more people talking about the day-before and the upcoming games – even the girls at work, which is quite a development 😉
So, yesterday we went to watch South Africa versus France at Oblivion. We only arrived a few minutes before the game started and luckily for us we had booked a table, because the pub was crowded with Bafana Bafana supporters.
The target was a 3:0 win given that Uruguay beat Mexico. And it looked good… Bafana lead by 2:0 after the first half and the atmosphere was great. Everyone hoped that they would score one or even two more goals and progress to the last 16. But France came back and scored in the 70th minute.
That was also the end result 2:1 to South Africa. And despite the elimination from the World Cup everyone was happy and celebrated Bafana’s win over France, which is a big deal as they showed the world that they’re a great team.
After having only seen the games on the screen (almost every game to be honest – I even matched my lunch break with the playtime so that I could watch one half of the 13.30 game) on Monday I will finally watch a game live at the Green Point Stadium in Cape Town. It’s not 100% certain yet which teams will play but it’s likely that I will see Portugal playing Spain or Chile. Either way it’s definitely going to be a good game and since I support none of them I can relax and enjoy the soccer.
My second World Cup ticket (which is for the quarterfinal in Cape Town) I “unfortunately” had to give away since I’m going on safari. But it’s not just any safari, it’s our 22 days!!! Southern Experience from Victoria Falls through Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. Next week Thursday I’ll fly from Cape Town to Victoria Falls. I will spend the day exploring the famous Victoria Falls and hope to have enough time to do some of the exciting activities like white water rafting, abseiling or even kayaking. There are so many things to do there that it’s hard to make a decision – but luckily I have a few more days.
On Thursday the safari will start and every time I think about the next few weeks (which seems to happen quite often) I get totally excited. I’ve read the itinerary at least 10 times and can’t wait to see all the highlights: The Victoria Falls, the dunes in Sossusvlei, the Fish River canyon and hopefully loads of wildlife in the different national parks we are going to visit.
Therefore the decision between one World Cup quarterfinal and three weeks of travelling wasn’t too difficult to make. And Nick, my housemate, is especially happy for me since he got my World Cup ticket.
But this also means that I will only spend a few more days here with Jenman and in Cape Town. I can hardly believe that it’s only 7 days to my safari and after the trip I will only have 4 more days to spend in Cape Town. In total that’s not even two weeks! But trust me; I will definitely make the best of the remaining days starting this night with watching Germany defeating Ghana (and perhaps a little “after match party”) 😉
But I can’t party too long since there are so many things that need to be done before I leave. I still have to finish some projects I’m currently working on like the accommodation descriptions for our fully upgraded tours and the newsletters for July. I also have to start working on my project for university… I want to analyze the breakdown of the costs versus the profit of our Botswana Tours which is really interesting but it’s also quite comprehensive and I think it’s going to take up a lot of my time…
So I better get back to work and start to work off my to-do-list.
See you next week Tobias
