Bafana Bafana

We're back from the France-Uruguay game and I brought back an incredible headache fueled by the cold and those stupid vuvuzelas.

First we went to the spectator zone where everyone was rooting for South Africa to beat Mexico. If there were any Mexicans present, they were wearing South African jerseys and keeping a low profile. When South Africa scored the first goal, the place went wild, people cheered "Bafana Bafana", and even the rest of the city had a roar to it. Towards the end, Mexico levelled up and it deflated the atmosphere a little bit, but most still seemed content with a draw.

Then we set off for our main event at Green Point Stadium. It was a very short walk since we chose a spectator zone nearby, but we soon ran into an unorganized mass of people who had no delusions they were in a line. People pushed in from all sides to enter the single-file walkways. We only had to travel about 20 meters to get from one side of the mass to the other, but everyone was shuffling along and stealing half a step whenever the crowd inched forward.

Unsurprisingly, the first real douchebags in the mass turned out to be Americans. They were the only Americans nearby and were twenty-somethings who had been drinking and amused themselves by mocking other peoples' accents. They pushed their way through the crowd faster than anyone and it was easy to see how a trampling could have been started in that situation. If they had been the ones trampled, I'm sure their families would've lamented the loss without ever having known what total assholes they were. That's not to say the Americans were the only jerkwads in the mass. Of noter were some French, Uruguayans, and Australians.

The game was exciting, even though we were situated between two different groups of older English who shared our calm, unpassionate demeanor throughout the game. I have a hard time imagining open-air tickets better than the ones we had. We were perhaps one seat to the right of the midfield line and we were three rows back on the second deck, looking down on the entire field. If you watched the game on television, we were directly across from the camera. You may have seen a row of English and Americans who didn't jump out of their seats every other second.

Tomorrow morning we say goodby to Cape Town and fly to Johannesburg. Around Noon here we'll land in Joberg, rent a car, check into our lodging, and then set off again for a two-hour drive to Rustenburg to see the USA beat England. Afterwards, it's a two-hour car ride back with likely a similar headache to the one I have now. It's likely that we'll be moving non-stop until midnight tomorrow, when we return from the USA. Future internet connectivity is unknown at this point, but we'll almost certainly have it by the June 18th. Everyone back in the States had better be watching the games. I'm going to be asking you if Uruguay handled the ball in the box late in the game. They don't show any replays in the stadium for fear of swaying referee decisions or something.

Quotes from the day...

- Stadium Announcer: "Substitution for Paraguay, I mean Uruguay..."
Uruguayans in Crowd: "Boooooooo"

- The Blonde: "Was that a Butterfly kick?
Me:
The Blonde: "I mean a Bicycle kick"