They even invited us to join their table for breakfast – we are now honorary Mexicans! So we sat on the table of 9, not our usual 2 alongside, but most of the youngsters were up until after 4am and never made it down to breakfast. They apparently had some friends round for a ‘party’ on the last night but were told to keep the noise down so as not to disturb us. We never heard a thing! They now head off to Cape Town and then to safari in Kenya and Tanzania. We will miss them and we certainly helped each other in terms of directions and sharing things we learned and their presence, as well as that of Ilse, Johnny and their team, has made the guest house experience something truly memorable about this trip. Far better in this situation than the anonymity of a large hotel. The initial part of the journey is on a steam train from Pretoria to Cape Town, a journey which takes 48 hours and stops at Kimberley. They will have a great time I’m sure and we look forward to emailing with them about it later – and maybe I will even see them when they come through London for a few hours in mid-July, I’ve offered to be their tour guide if my diary allows.Pretoria, currently being renamed Tshwane which means ‘we are the same’, is also our destination for this day. As we were to find, it is an attractive city with many buildings in late 19th/early 20th century colonial style dating to the original British and Dutch colonisers. It is also famous for its trees, many of the streets are lined with Jacaranda trees, and for Church Street, one of the longest city streets in Africa. We started there, mainly lined with shops and market stalls as well as statues and colonial buildings, today it also had the addition of some modern footballer statues, which we later found lit up at night, and quite a crowd of Chilean and Spanish football supporters singing and dancing in a central square. Not much to buy but we did go into a few shops and spoke to some of street traders in search of World Cup memorabilia, the Fifa shops were so disappointing.
We then drove to the Union Buildings, Pretoria’s most famous buildings set on a hill above the city. They are the seat of government dating from the time in the early 20th century when Pretoria became the capital of a united South Africa. You may have seen them in the film Invictus. A photo opportunity of the buildings and their attractive landscaped gardens but no entry as this is really where the country is being governed from. Then we drove to the Voortrekker monument, high on a hill the south of the city. This commemorates The Great Trek when Dutch settlers first loaded their wagons and moved to explore and settle in the interior of the country. 15,000 set out on various different routes and after wars, famine and disease they founded the great cities of interior South Africa. There were various friezes, tapestries and statues depicting and celebrating various events of The Great Trek and you could also go to roof level (about 7-8 storeys up) and look out over the city although the dust and light made views hazy. John was brave and went up further, up a short flight of steps to view down through the roof into the main chamber – not for me that one!
And so on to the Fan Fest. This was a special one as it took place in the famous Centurion cricket ground and fans trampled over the outfield although the square was well protected. A bit of a mini-crisis on the way thought, the satnav stopped working and the only map we had wasn’t clear enough. We drove in the approximate direction, John was driving, and I knew that we needed a pin to reach the reset button and we didn’t have one. Talking through various option John mentioned the word staple, and eureka, I remembered the World Cup newspaper supplement in the bag at my feet and took out the staple from the centre page – that fixed it! We do work well together! We had wanted to watch the Brazil v Portugal match on the big screen but for various reasons, not least that it wasn’t much of a game, we didn’t watch it with particular concentration. 
We took pictures of the ground, John went and successfully negotiated with Coca Cola for some free Vuvezelas (they give them out after the game normally but there is always a huge queue), and then we went to get something to eat. Pizza today to celebrate the Italian’s demise yesterday. There was one menu item that we didn’t understand (see picture left, Daniel J. if you liked the previous picture ‘joke’ then you’ll love this one!). So we took our pizza over to the main stand to sit and eat and watch the game. 
On the way I saw a new use for a Vuvuzela – a quieter one this time – the goalposts in an impromptu football game.So we sat and eat our pizza watching the game and chatting. After we finished eating I put my pizza box down and knocked over my Vuvuzela which fell into the row in front so I climbed over the seats to get it and then back again.
There were two young African girls (in their 20s I guess) sitting in that row and one turned to me with a glint in her eye and a charming smile and said “if you had offered me some of your pizza then I would have picked it up for you”. So we had a bit of banter and then a really interesting and enjoyable conversation. I gave them the blog address so they may be reading this in which case, yes I was telling the truth about the blog, and hi there! They were both University graduates, one now working for a pharmaceutical company and the other for an electricity utility. They were really excited that we were there as they believed the English press reporting had put many people off coming to SA for the World Cup. We talked about security and crime, inter-tribal relations between the different black tribes in SA, different languages spoken as there are 11 official languages in SA, relationships and even inter-marriage between white and black people, travel overseas and a variety of topics. They allowed us to take their photograph (see left) and we went our different ways. They will no doubt do well with the opportunities that the new SA will bring as it develops, and we were much educated by their intellect, enthusiasm, willingness to share their thoughts, and verbal expressiveness. Do well young ladies!
Then we went to the match. An easy drive to the Loftus Versfeld stadium and very few roadblocks and minimal police presence compared to Jo’burg or Rustenberg. We drove to a park and walk area and with no ticket checks or pre-booking we parked easily and, importantly, near the exit. It was about a mile to the ground and the colourful red, white and blue of Chile mingled with the Red and Yellow of Spain, united in a common language. The ground is an older stadium obviously used by the eponymous football club. We went to the fan shops, becoming increasingly desperate knowing the eager expectations of the kids back home, and then into the ground. On the way I did see one Spaniard dressed as a matador ‘play bull fighting’ with his mate, and in general in was a vibrant latin atmosphere. 
On entry to the stadium who should be adjacent to our seats again, yes, the men from the Japanese FA (who John now thinks are not from the Japanese FA). We were excited to see each other and this time we even had a photo taken together! The seats were probably our worst so far, near the goal-line at one end but the stadium was an older one and poorly designed so we had to keep leaning forward or standing up to be able to see and we were roughly under the front of the stand above. This meant that every time the people above made noise by banging the advertising boards on the front of the stand we got showered with rust and dirt. Lovely!The game was effectively ended by a second Spanish goal and concurrently the sending off of a Chilean player. Although Chile did score early in the second half the game effectively ended on the hour mark when the game took on a monotonous rhythm, it had been good til then. Chile were fortunate that Switzerland only drew with Honduras and for the third time in four games we had seen the two qualifiers in the group play each other, Italy being the only exception and no-one would have bet on that! So although not the teams I predicted yesterday, it was indeed a European and South American team that progressed and not the two European teams. A quick exit from the car park and a good journey (about an hour) back to the guest house and we need some sleep as we have an early start and long day tomorrow.
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