Bafana Bafana

Posted by Kristina

Bafana Bafana!

Two words we are hearing quite a bit here in South Africa, “Bafana Bafana”, it means “Go Boys Boys”. Its the name for the national South Africa soccer team. So on Friday we drove up to Pretoria to spend the night before the US game on Saturday. We wanted to get there in time to watch the opening game with the locals. There’s truly nothing like watching the games of the host country with the locals.

The stunning, 7 hour drive to Pretoria from Durban for the game opener, South Africa vs. Mexico, turned out to be quite interesting! We were both exhausted, but the scenery, traffic signs, and animals kept us entertained. Not to mention Patrick’s near visit to a South African prison. He was driving around 169km in a 120km zone, this is 105 mph in a 75 mph zone. All of the sudden two men in brown jumped out in the middle of the road and waved us over, now if you didn’t know, Africa is very brown, so being a police officer and wearing brown in the bush…mmmm….not so smart! They almost became road kill…but we managed to pull over. They told Patrick to come with them, crossed the highway and showed him on the radar how fast he was going. The proceeded to tell him that they need to take him to jail, where he will stay for “3 maybe 4 days”. Patrick asked if there were a way to take care of the ticket now, the officer asked, “How much do you want to pay?” Thank goodness for our experience with Costa Rican police, Patrick paid the officer and we were on our way! It was amazing to drive from 1st world country to 3rd world. It was as if we were in Ft. Lauderdale, FL in the States and then in one of the worst parts of Nicaragua. It was difficult to wrap your head around.

View Road to Pretoria Fan Fest 11.6.06 in a larger map

Below, are some pictures from our drive:

A quick shot of a sign, while we were driving into Pretoria.

We arrived in Pretoria and the Fan Fest just in time for the opening game. If you don’t know what a Fan Fest is, it is a space outside of the stadium where fans can go and watch the games. Fan Fest’s have a large screen, food, entertainment and much more. Being this was the opener for South Africa there were 28,000 people in the particular Fan Fest, lots of yellow shirts and too many vuvuzela’s! Johannesberg’s (Joberg’s) Fan Fest had 200,000 people!