World Cup 2010

I think that this huge poster that we saw at Monte Casino in Johannesburg says it all. What a wonderful occasion the World Cup was. After all the doom and gloom in the press it was great that it was such a successful event. All the foreign visitors that we spoke to said that they'd had a wonderful time, that South Africa is a beautiful country and that the people were so friendly and welcoming.

Originally we'd planned to be travelling to Zambia and Malawi from May to July but with the engine problems that we had earlier this year we decided to postpone that trip until next year and go to one of the World Cup matches. We couldn't get tickets for any of the England games or the ones in Durban (all fully booked by the time we tried to purchase tickets in April) so we ended up with tickets for the New Zealand v Slovakia game in Rustenburg.

We arranged to stay with Greg and Des (our niece) in Johannesburg and then visit Karl and Erika, who we'd met on the ship to St Helena, and live in nearby Pretoria. After that we planned to spend a few weeks in Zimbabwe and Botswana, however we enjoyed the atmosphere of the match so much that we ended up spending several days in Polokwane and buying tickets for the Argentina v Greece game so spent more time in South Africa than we'd originally intended.

Johannesburg, Pretoria and Rustenburg

Polokwane

Diary (Word '97 document)

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