Monday, June 14, 2010:
We all wake up early on Sunday and take part in the awesome breakfast that is made personally for us at the guest house. I chose an omelette, with, guess it...ham and cheese.
Like I've mentioned before, we're staying in a town called Pretoria. And, we're about a 15 minute walk from Loftus Versveld Stadium, where the U.S. will play next week. On Sunday, the stadium was host to Ghana vs. Serbia - we decided to try to get in.
A trip to FIFA tickets which is a nearby mall was useless. The line to buy tickets was too large. We come back, park our car at our lodge, and walk to the stadium.
We see some people scalping, but not many. The Ticket Office is on the opposite side of the stadium, which because so many streets are shut down, is quite a walk. It's cool, in some way, 'cause you get to see more fans walking around.
The ticket center had no tickets, so we start looking for scalpers. We find a few Argentines and I ask how they are doing in their search for tickets. They tell us they've bought one for about $80, and one for about $30. Great, we think.
Our problem was that we wanted to get seven tickets. Some people are offering tickets for over $100, which we know is high. A few minutes into the start of the game, we find a couple of Ghanaian fans that are selling. We say we need seven, 'No Problem,' we're told.
One guy runs to another place, and brings back a wad of tickets. He says we can have them for $90. No way, we tell him. We're not paying more that 400 rand (about $35). He walks away, but another guy, with another huge stack of tickets says he'll sell them for 500 rand. Again, we say we're not paying more than 400. He agrees to it.
This raised a flag. Why did two people have so many tickets, and why did this guy so easily accept our offer? Were they real?
We look at the tickets and begin to laugh: they say Ghana Football Federation.
We walk in on the TV side - and it's endline to endline full of Ghana fans. At first we're split up, than we find each other and sit / stand behind this awesome group dressed in colorful gear and enjoying themselves with drums, songs, and dancing. It was awesome.
At halftime, a huge number of them walk to the field level, where a barrier divided a path and the field. They allowed the fans to march all the way around the stadium, singing and dancing. It was a cool to see.
We are having a blast and want to jump in this section. When Ghana scored late in the game, we were right in the middle of a massive party. I attempted to dance with one guy at the top of the group, and then Curtis and I joined in a bit further down.
Another cool experience.
Today we tried to go to the Holland vs. Denmark game in Johannesburg, which is about an hour away. However, we left way too late and decided to not even park when we got there.
Instead, we turned around and came back to Petroria to watch at the official FIFA FanFest. It was at a cricket ground. Unfortunately, it was nothing like what we'd seen in Germany. Yes, they had the huge screens, and plenty of people selling coke, the official sponsor. But there really weren't many people there, maybe because it was a work day? For us it was a great relaxing way to be outside and continue enjoying the games.
Right now we're talking about driving to a national park to go on a safari tomorrow. How long I've waited for this - so I'm probably the one most looking forward to it.
