After a 13 hour flight from New York to Dubai, a 2 hour layover, an 8 hour flight from Dubai to Johannesburg, 1 hour at customs / baggage claim and a ~45 minute drive to our (incredibly dilapidated) hostel, I finally arrived in South Africa earlier this evening. I'm running on virtually zero sleep, but I'm getting by on excitement, adrenaline and the fact that it's too cold outside to fall asleep anyway (in the 40's and dropping).
I feel fortunate that my first World Cup 2010 soccer experience has been a South Africa-related one. I'm writing this post while watching the first half of the South Africa versus Uruguay game at a restaurant in an upscale shopping mall in Sandton (a suburb of Jo'burg and the financial center of the region). Not surprisingly, the restaurant (and all the others around it) are packed. There are tons of South Africans, but from my table I can also spot the colors of Mexico, Turkey (and they're not even in the World Cup this year . . .), Argentina, Brazil and USA. It seems like all the tourists are rooting for South Africa tonight, and how could they not? Everyone's pulling for the South Africans, both because of the underdog angle but also because they've seemingly been excellent hosts so far.
The atmosphere has been electric from what I've seen, and I've only been in the airport and the suburbs by where we're staying. Tomorrow I get my first live World Cup experience when we travel to Soccer City Stadium to watch Argentina play South Korea. Normally I'd have trouble sleeping with anticipation, but after a long 24+ hours of traveling I'll hopefully sleep well tonight. Stay tuned for more tomorrow after the game (7:30 AM EST).
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