We woke up relatively early on Saturday morning after the night at Presley's, both ready to get going. Once we carved out our ridiculous mustaches and grabbed a quick bite, we went to Brooklyn Mall in Pretoria to pick up our tickets to the other games from FIFA. Bad idea! The line was at least three hours long, and FIFA volunteers were giving out misleading advice, so we decided pretty quickly to bag it. Next stop: Rustenberg, home of Royal Bafokeng Stadium, about 1.5 hours away from Pretoria on the N4, site of the USA-England match.
Rustenberg is in the middle of platinum mining country. South Africa produces 90% of the world's platinum, and a large chunk of that comes from the Northwest Province. Therefore, there were lots of large mining trucks in front of us on the two-lane road, impeding our progress. We got off for gas at one point and discovered that South Africa = New Jersey: all gas is full service. Someone has to pump it for you. Such a ridiculous law, but understandable in a country with 35% unemployment.
Once we finally got off the N4 and headed into town, we really needed a map and didn't have one. We had to visit an Internet cafe on Nelson Mandela Blvd. (every city has one) just to figure out where to go next. Our mission was still to pick up tickets to our games later in the week. Though it took us an hour to find the Waterfall Mall pick-up point, we finally got our tickets. Rustenburg was just annoyingly crowded and difficult to get around in.
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