Ole Ole Travel Company

If you read my "Bus Odyssey" blogs last week, you'll know that I'm not a fan of our tour group Ole Ole (www.oleole.com). Frankly, this company is disorganized and just moronic (although many of the people working for them are extremely nice). If you recall, it took us six hours to drive to the USA vs. England game; a drive which should have been 2.5 hours. The straw that broke the camel's back that day was when the tour leader had forgotten to bring the parking permit for the bus. This made us have to wait an additional hour+ to get into the stadium. That tour leader has since quit or been fired but that hasn't stopped the constant mistakes by Ole Ole.

For the USA vs. Slovenia game, we were scheduled to leave our hotel at 12:30 for the 4PM game. As soon as we got on the bus, I said to the tour leader, "Do we have a parking permit?" The guy said, "I don't know" and turned to the bus driver and asked him if he had a permit. The bus driver said that the other Ole Ole worker had it. Well, the other Ole Ole worker didn't have it. Nobody had it. Once again, our tour company didn't collect the permit from wherever they were supposed to get it. This meant that our bus wasn't allowed through the road block set up near the stadium. This wouldn't be a problem if they let everyone off at the road block. It was only a fifteen minute walk from there to the stadium. However, the tour leader instead tried over and over to find an alternate way into the stadium which meant aimless driving for thirty or more minutes down roads which are not meant for big buses. Finally we convinced the guy to drop us off on the street and we walked. The point is though, they had four years to prepare for this event and continually are making idiotic mistakes. They say that insanity is when you try to do the same thing over and over and expect different results. That is exactly what Ole Ole is doing; this company is insane. So if you stroll on to my blog looking to book World Cup tickets for 2014, I highly suggest you find a different tour company.

South African Taxi Cabs

In Johannesburg, the locals usually take taxi cabs that look like this:

On our first day, our travel company told us not to trust these taxis. We took that advice and have since been taking "metered" cabs. I put metered in quotes because I have yet to actually see a meter in a cab. Every taxi driver has offered us a different price to go from the same location to the same location. We have been told that some cabs are government registered cabs and need to charge a certain price based on distance traveled. It seems to me crazy that the World Cup organizers didn't do a better job of legitimizing the taxi industry here in J'burg (in Cape Town the taxis were perfectly legit).

To sum up how ridiculous the taxi situation is, let me tell you a little story. After the USA vs. Slovenia game we decided not to take the Ole Ole Group bus back (see tomorrow's blog). At the stadium were signs for "metered taxis". We followed the signs, asked the volunteers at the stadium, and still ended up on a street with no taxis. There were a few police working the street and we approached two of them. We asked one of the cops where we could find a taxi and he replied, "Where do you want to go?" We told him we wanted to go to Melrose Arch, one of the fan zones near where we're staying. He told us that he would take us. We all looked at each other wondering just how far this guy took his public service duties. He gave his fellow policewoman a nod and told us to follow him. We walked a few blocks with this cop and then go into his personal car. As soon as we sat down inside he said, "How much you gonna pay me?" Devin, Chris, Dave and I all looked at each other as if to say, "Here we go again." The cop wanted 450 Rand, almost $70. We all told him there was no chance. The cop was willing to go down to 350 which was still absurd. We all got out of his cab, and luckily found another cab who charged us just 120 Rand.

The beauty of this is that the cop left his duty to try and extort us. I'm not sure if this makes me question the police as a whole here or whether people just think as taxi drivers they need to rip off tourists.

Happy Father's Day!!!

(PICTURE: My favorite picture of me and my Dad.)

Big Guy!!!!

Happy Father's Day! I'm having a great time in South Africa but every day I've wished that you could be here with me, especially when I was on safari. You're the greatest Dad in the world and not a day goes by that I don't realize that. I love you and miss you!!!

To all the other father's out there (i.e. my brother and the lion I saw on safari): Happy Father's Day to you too!


(PICTURE: My favorite photo of Zev and Lilah.)



(PICTURE: The King of Animals looking after his little cub.)

USA vs. Slovenia

(PICTURE: I took this off of ESPN.com. If you look at the top right of the American flag you can see Devin, Chris and Dave. I'm to the left of Devin, underneath the flag!)

(PICTURE: See, I'm under the flag!)

Wow! What a game last night. After playing horribly in the first half, the US managed to come back from two goals down to tie Slovenia. In fact, we scored a third goal that was controversially disallowed by the referee. When the ball went in on the third goal our half of the stadium erupted. I was in the middle of a group hug with Chris and a few strangers when someone said, "They called offsides!!!" This was literally the definition of a buzz kill. I've never been on such a euphoric high and brought back down so quickly. What made it worse was that I was absolutely drenched in beer that someone had spilled on a bunch of people in celebration.

That's my quick update on the game. Now, I'd like to directly address the guy who was sitting a row in front of me: Hey, Asshole! DO NOT THROW YOUR BEER BOTTLE INTO THE CROWD YOU FUCKING MORON. It's one thing to spray people with beer, it's another to launch a bottle into the air. Sure, the Bud bottles are plastic but that doesn't mean it can't hurt someone. It's people like you that can turn something fun into something scary. You could have hit a kid -- which there were plenty of -- or broken someone's nose/teeth/face with your stupidity.

If anyone at the World Cup is reading this, please continue to have fun but don't act like a total neanderthal.

Shosholoza

There are a few songs that are constantly played at the World Cup. There is the K'Naan theme song called "Waving Flag" and then there is the Shakira song which I think is called, "Check Out How Fast I Can Shake My Butt." However, there is another song that I'm not sure people are hearing on TV. It's a song that is constantly played at the stadiums called "Shosholoza." "Shosholoza" is a traditional South African folk song about a train that keeps going forward.

Here's the lyrics according to Wikipedia:

Shosholozah
Shosholozah
Ku lezontabah
Stimela siphum' eSouth Africa
Shosholozah
Shosholozah
Ku lezontabah
Stimela siphum' eSouth Africa
Wen' uyabalekah
Wen' uyabalekah
Ku lezontabah
Stimela siphum' eSouth Africa

A rough translation:

Go forward
Go forward
On those mountains
Train from South Africa.
Go forward
Go forward
You are running away
You are running away
On those mountains
Train from South Arica.

Identity Crisis: Am I Paraguayan?

(PICTURE: The flag of my beloved Paraguay.)

On Tuesday night, The guys and I went to the Italy vs. Paraguay game in Cape Town:


(PICTURE: Devin, Chris and Dave outside Cape Town stadium.)

Chris's father was born and raised in Sicily, making Chris the first generation American in his family. Chris was obviously rooting for Italy in the game. Despite Devin's 100% Italian last name, he's actually only 25% Italian. However, this was more than enough for him to passionately root for Italy.

Despite taking two years of Italian classes, I'm 0% Italian and actually hate the Italian football team more than any other team. If you watch football, you'll most likely agree that no team dives/act/complains more than the Italian squad.

On top of that, I had good reason to root for Paraguay in this game -- I'm part Paraguayan. Okay, that's not true. I have zero Pargauyan blood in my body. However, I do have family in Paraguay...at least I thought I did. When my family fled Europe, they went all around the world. You may recall that I once wrote on my blog that I'm named after my great grandmother Bella who actually fled to and lived in Shanghai for some time. Well, some of my other family went to South America.

I told the guys that I had family in Paraguay and they thought it was pretty funny. It was even funnier when a group of Paraguayan people saw me the day of the game and singled me out with a wave and a smile. They could sense pseudo Paraguayan blood. That afternoon I wrote an email to my sister and my cousin Greg asking where in Paraguay our family lived. My sister wrote back first and said something like, "Uh, I think our family lives in Uruguay." Paraguay, Uraguay...simple mistake right?

My cousin Greg -- the king of the August family genealogy -- wrote me back later and confirmed my ignorance. However, he did say that "we may have some family in Paraguay." That means there's still a chance I'm sort of part Paraguayan!!!!

Anyway, Paraguay tied Italy 1-1.

Laundry

(PICTURE: See anything strange in this picture?)

I'm usually quite a good packer but on this trip I made a big mistake -- I didn't pack enough undies or socks. The other day, I decided to use one of the skills I've learned in Vietnam -- hand washing clothes. I took a pair of boxers and two of my favorite socks and scrubbed and washed them in my hotel sink. After ringing out the now-wonderfully smelling clothes, I hung them on our hotel balcony to dry. The clothes were still damp later in the day so I decided to keep them outside over night. It was a bad move.

Cape Town apparently has hurricane-like winds. When I awoke in the morning, I could hear the wind swirling outside. I got out of bed and went to the porch and discovered that my undies and one sock were gone. This didn't really make sense because the balcony was surrounded by a three foot high wall of glass. Using my best detective skills, I looked over the balcony's edge and saw my boxers sunk at the bottom of a small algae pool on top of a covered electrical unit:


(PICTURE: One of my favorite boxers.)

I decided to give up on the boxers but wanted to rescue my lone lost sock. Dave and I went to the ground floor and looked everywhere for the sock. Alas, we came up empty handed. The sock blew away to, I can only assume, Antarctica.