So, if you read the previous post - the first of the worst, you're probably thinking that what happened wasn't so bad. And it wasn't. It was just the beginning of a series of unfortunate events....
So we join our new Israeli friends on their adventure. South Africa has a bunch of animal reserves. Basically they put a fence around a large piece of land where wild animals live and declare it a park. You pay about a dollar per person and then drive through on your own taking pictures of the animals you see.
We went to Pilanesberg Game Reserve, which is one of the largest at 55,000 hectare. 1 hectare = 2.5 acres, so the park was approximately 137,500 acres. Right? Or something. I'm not good at math. Regardless, it was big. Gigantic even. The all inclusive tour would take three hours, we were told. Of course this was too long, so we decided to drive the shortened, hour tour. We were also given strict instructions to not leave our vehicles or roll down our windows more than half way. There were lions and hyenas in the park. This makes sense. So we start driving, see some elephants, a giraffe and baby giraffe. We're having fun. It's a narrow dirt road. The car we're in starts driving a bit faster and then swerving a bit - still having fun. And then the fun stops. Our car runs over a rock and into a ditch. We are stuck. Everyone has to exit the vehicle to survey the damage and attempt to unstick the car. We are in a game reserve surrounded by waist-high grass. The Israelis are yelling at each other in Hebrew, and I start to freak out. No one was eaten, thankfully. After an hour we got the car free and drove back the route we had taken. The car had a flat tire, which was fixed. We shake ourselves off, happy to have made it out alive.
At this point, we're running late to the game, which is the whole reason we were with the Israelis. We park the car at the stadium and start to run to the stadium. We quickly exchange phone numbers with the Israelis and a plan to meet back at the car after the game. We get to the stadium ten minutes late, and had missed Ghana's first goal. Bad mood. The game was good. Sad to have seen the US lose, but happy it was to an African team. So we start walking back to the shuttle to take us to the car.
This was our first game, and we quickly realized it wasn't very well organized. There were no lines just masses of people being funneled onto buses. We also realize there are many, many parking lots. And we also realize that neither of us can remember what parking lot our Israeli friends are at. The game went into overtime, so it's around 11:30pm by the time we find our way onto a bus, going to a parking lot we hope is the parking lot.
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