The US is through to the Round of 16! The next match is against Ghana, the team that knocked us out of the group stage in 2006, at Rustenberg's Royal Bafokeng Stadium.
Bafokeng means "people of the dew." The earliest Setswana-speaking settlers came down from Botswana and Zimbabwe around the 12th century AD, took note of the heavy dew that settles every morning, and figured it would be a fertile region in which to drop anchor. The Royal Bafokeng Nation had the savvy to enlist white Lutheran ministers as a front to enable them to purchase the land legally and prevent the Boers from taking over the area in the 1800's. It turned out to be one of the great real estate acquisitions in history, as their dewy land sits on top of the world's richest platinum mines. The discovery of such mines led to further legal fights over ownership of the land, but the RBN had the wherewithal to prevail. Thus, they receive an estimated $63 million annually from mining royalties (per Wikipedia).
The RBN spend a lot of their money on infrastructure. One thing they built is a mediocre stadium complex about 13 km outside of Rustenburg, reachable via a two-lane road. Somehow (probably as the result of bribes), FIFA visited this place and decided that it would be an appropriate World Cup venue, despite serious traffic issues and the lack of hotel rooms.
The aftermath of the USA-England game exposed these shortcomings to Bill and me. Upon leaving the stadium grounds, traffic going to the stadium was at a standstill and the crowd of people exiting was chaotic. There seemed to be no way to find the bus driver who brought us to the game who was supposed to meet us on the other side. Thus began the "death march" of thousands of people in the same situation trekking back to town. After about twenty minutes of walking, a bus pulled up and we squeezed in; we didn't even know where it was going. After about 15 minutes, it stopped in a park-and-ride field somewhere far from both the stadium and town. We were going to have trouble getting back to town unless we hitched a ride from a random or bribed the bus driver to forego his park-and-ride responsibilities and drop us off at the Palm Lodge. That's where we were parked and Pudding had offered up his hotel room floor for us to crash. We chose bribery, and 500 rand later (hey, demand outstripped supply), our bus driver delivered us to the Lodge. Ouch.
Unfortunately, our rendezvous with Pudding at the Lodge's bar was closed. Boo! We went by their room, and they weren't back yet. After briefly considering driving back to Pretoria, we reminded ourselves that Chris had described late-night on the N4 as a "death trap." So we couldn't stay in Rustenburg, but we couldn't leave. In a pickle, one option remained: sleep in the car. At least it was in a lit, gated, barbed-wired parking lot.
So, we leaned the seats back and raced to see who could fall asleep first and who would have to hear the other snore. Bill won, and I listened to him snore for about two hours before sleep took me over. If you're keeping score, I spent three consecutive nights (1) in a plane; (2) waking up pretty early after the late-night trip to Presley's; and (3) in a car. Needless to say, I was pretty knackered by the time we left Rustenburg around 7:00, sped past the quite lovely Bafokeng morning dew, and made it back to the Pretoria guest house just after 8:00.
The lesson is: if you plan on going to the USA-Ghana game, take an RV and camp out at the park-and-ride. There don't seem to be any other options. And, be careful doing any real estate deals with the Bafokeng people.
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