Last Days of South Africa Part 1 (Pic included)

June 25th, Day 14:

    We woke up early to the smell of Cella, the pastor's wife, cooking breakfast and we enjoyed another great meal courtesy of our kind hosts. Cella prepared lunch for us as well and we packed our bicycles. We thanked the pastor and his wife for their kindess and generousity in letting us stay with them for the night and headed off to Vryburg, approximately 70 kilometers down the N14. It was a superb day for bicycling, minus the brisk weather, which did not stop us from speeding down the road with the wind at our backs and flat ground the whole way. We made it to Vryburg within three hours and checked into the International Hotel.

    Vryburg is a relatively large town with lively streets and shops of all sorts. We were excited to be in another place with lots of people and internet access, but things didn't work out exactly the way we wanted them to. After settling into the hotel and resting up for a bit, we decided to try and take care of two pressing needs, getting on the internet and fixing the camera attachment to my bicycle. We first decided to try and take care of the camera attachment and went to a few hardware stores, yet no one could help us do what we wanted. We got even more fustrated when we found the proper piece to attach the camera yet no one could assist us in drilling a whole in this piece to allow us to film when we are bicycling. We were told the person who could do this would be available in the morning so we were resigned to waking up early and getting this problem fixed.

    We then went over to the internet cafe to get onto the internet and update our blog, but upon getting there we were told the internet was down on all the computers and they did not know when it would be back up and running. We then asked them if we could just use the computer for offline purposes, checking our video footage and writing our blog in a Word document, but they informed us the computers could only be accessed when the internet was working. Fustrated we were unable to fix the camera attachment and get on the internet, we decided to take a nap and rest up for the big soccer match, South Africa versus Brazil.

    Fortunately for us, the hotel had a nice bar with a big screen TV in it, so we ordered some steaks and enjoyed the game with some locals. It was a great game with both sides getting multiple chances, yet Brazil was able to score on a free kick in the 88th minute and held on for the victory. While it was sad, because we wanted SA to be victorious, it was still a fun game to watch and SA seems like a team on the rise heading into next year's World Cup as the hosts. We were also very happy because we learned during the game that the United States had upset the #1 team in the world, Spain, and advanced to the Confederation Cup Championship.

    We returned to our room after the match, where we did some reading and watched some more TV. There happened to be this game show on, where they had 36 little boxes with squiggly lines going in circles, and asked the viewers to find three boxes that had differences. At first we didn't really pay attention to the game, but as the time passed and no one had gotten the answer, we took interest and decided to find the three different boxes. It only took us like 10 minutes or so, but we identified the boxes that did not belong. I should mention that the prize was now up to 30,000 Rand so Aaron desperately searched the hotel for a phone to call in with.  We eventually found someone working the late shift, who we offered to pay for using his phone. At this point we were pretty excited because no one had won the money, yet we became suspicious because it seemed to easy for no one to have won by now. I decided to call the show's information line to figure out why we had not gotten through and why no one else had either. The info line informed me that once you call in, they put your number into the computer, which randomly selects a person to be on the show. At this point we were both pretty annoyed we had spent so much time on this game show only to realize it was basically just a scam to get money out of people. We shut off the TV, fustrated and slightly embarrassed we had tried in the first place. We didn't have much time to think about it as we would be off on the road the following morning for Stella.

-Eric

(Us with the pastor and his wife)