The game did not flow very well, and compared to football played in the 3/4th playoff game from the previous night was disappointing, but lets face it, if I was only interested in the football I could have stayed at home and watched it on the tele with instant replays, attending the games has been as much about the atmosphere as the game itself. The Dutch played dirty and unfortunately their tournament will probably be remembered that way.

As with our other games, we met people in the stands, took lots of photos and did our regular video introductions…

Alex from the train to Soccer City

Andy introduces the World Cup final (be sure to listen to my score prediction)

Stacie, our gracious hostess, provides the closing comments

Sorry for the noise they make, they get excited easily.

Seriously though, it would be absolutely crazy of us to come all the way to South Africa and not do a Safari. So for the last couple of days between games we drove up to Pilanesburg Game Reserve. My poor camera didn’t know what had hit it, for the first time this trip I managed to flatten the battery from taking so many photos. They’re still uploading to Flickr, but you’ll be able to see the complete selection in an hour or so (internet is slow here) at the following URL

http://www.flickr.com/photos/iminstant/sets/72157624438149330/

These animals are amazing, they’re massive, and it really comes home when you’re in a tiny Toyota Corolla rental with a Rhino facing you a few feet away.  The car was in reverse and I was ready to floor it and lift the clutch if I had seen that Rhino twitch, fortunately the only thing twitching was Andy’s arsehole (so he says I didn’t check).

We stopped at one hide and were lucky enough see a couple of Elephants come for a drink and a Hippo go for a swim.

Pretty tired now, and need to get sleep for our drive to Durban tomorrow, where we will see Germany take on Spain.  Who do you think will win?

To see all of my pictures from Glen Afric, you can click below to see the tag. Carl has an amazing set himself of the animals and trip there.

www.flickr.com More of IdoNotes’ stuff tagged with glenafric

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

But the Japan fans came out in full force.  Carl managed to capture some incredible game pictures as well as fan pictures.  The full set can be found in the VVorldCup photo pool on Flickr. Here are some of our favorites:

The drive itself was the same as last time, but lighter in traffic.  The smoke, however, was constant and almost burning to your throat at some points. They have begun making fire breaks in the land due to the dry winter. Fire breaks can be a wide swatch of land or all of the sides of the road for miles. we were able to see an entire mountain side on fire at one point during the drive making the road an entire fog. Now we get 5 hours of sleep and drive the opposite way to watch Brazil down in Durban play. But, we enjoy it so much.

Carl partying with the locals