A Final Update in Three Parts

Friday, June 11

11:33am: Imagine you’ve been on the road (in Africa) for three weeks and just spent two and a half days solid on a ferry.  What would your ideal next week look like?

If you were me and your answer was “chilling on the beach with three beautiful Swedish girls,” you’d be very much in luck.

The ferry and subsequent matola (pickup truck) ride to Cape Maclear ultimately took 62 hours, a full day longer than expected.  Once there, however, it only took me 10 minutes to drop my bags in a dorm, hand a pile of laundry into reception, pick up a book from the library (McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, edited by Michael Chabon), and be relaxing in a beach chair, a cold beer in hand and waves lapping at my feet.  Ah, paradise!

I spent the rest of the day reading, replying to email, and walking along the beach, confirming that the accommodations I had selected from the guidebook (Fat Monkeys) did in fact have the best vibe and amenities, despite being the furthest from town center (though it’s hard to complain about a <1Km walk along the beach).

The next day, spotting three beautiful girls at the beach bar, I figured it would be criminal to deny them my company, so I struck up a conversation with one of them.  Her name was Marlene, and she and her friends, Caroline and Elin, were all from Sweden and were on vacation in Malawi for the week after spending a few months volunteering at an orphanage for children with disabilities in Mozambique.  Obviously impressed with my cut physique, sharp wit, and high-roller lifestyle, the trio quickly adopted me into their group.  Accompanied frequently by a couple friendly locals, Jason and Solomon, we spent the next five days laying on the beach, swimming, snorkeling, boating, watching the fish eagles feed, playing with the hostel’s two adorable puppies, watching movies (sadly, it turns out the Princess Bride isn’t nearly as enjoyable if you didn’t grow up watching it countless times), dancing, learning to drum, having dinner at Solomon’s mother’s house, exploring the village market, and feasting on fresh bananas, tangerines, and the largest avocados I have ever seen (seriously, I made a meal out of just sliced avocado and a little salt).

By the time we parted ways, I was about as fully relaxed as imaginable.  Good thing too, because if I weren’t so relaxed, this bus ride I’m now on from Malawi to Johannesburg would be driving me out of my mind.  I’m not going to bother rehashing all the details, but let’s just say that instead of arriving in Johannesburg a couple of hours from now, we are sitting on the side of the road in Zimbabwe, with welders attempting to reattach the door.  As long as we get to Joburg by midday tomorrow so I can get to the USA/England match, it’ll all be ok…

Sunday, June 13

9:10am: GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!

Between my bus troubles (total transit time: 50 hours) and the fact that my ticket benefactors, Aaron and Arthur, were on a flight scheduled to arrive at 4:30pm the same day as the 8:30pm USA v England match a minimum two hour drive away in Rustenburg, I was convinced that we would end up getting to the game after halftime, if at all.  In order to maximize our chances, Josh (the guy from the train in Tanzania who I convinced to come to Malawi for a couple days, then the World Cup, much to the chagrin of his girlfriend in Zambia… sorry!) and I met Aaron and Arthur at the airport, gave their bags to the owner of the hostel where we are staying to bring back for us, then raced around trying to meet the cab driver I had encountered earlier in the day and arranged to drive us to the stadium and back.  Despite getting slightly lost just before reaching the stadium, we managed to get to our seats just in time to join our countrymen in belting out a deafening rendition of our national anthem.

I have never been at a sporting event with as much intensity as that match.  And maybe it’s because I don’t really follow soccer/football or maybe it’s because us USA fans were pleased with the 1-1 draw, but it seemed like everyone was just excited to be there and be cheering for their team, without the intense anxiety and desperate need to win that I associate with fandom at most tournament matches.  After the game, we joined pretty much every other American in the country in stopping off for the only fitting meal: McDonald’s.  Mmm, tastes like freedom!

Thursday, June 17

3:33am: I’m writing this final dispatch from my flight to DC from Johannesburg (via Dakar).  As the especially astute may notice from the timestamp of this post (if they are somehow also aware of my exact itinerary), I’m both attempting to switch myself over to Eastern Standard Time and failing miserably.  Somehow, knowing I’ll be landing in DC in a couple hours has me even more wired with anticipation than I have been for any destination since my first flight to Thailand.  I guess when you’ve gotten used to always arriving in new, foreign places, the familiar can be the one thing to really shock your system.

But before we get to the overwrought reflective stuff: WORLD CUP!!!

So on Monday, we spent most of the day watching matches on TVs and big screens at various restaurants and public venues.  I’ve never been much of a soccer fan, but traveling through the rest of this soccer-crazed world these past eight months has given me a new appreciation for the game.  Aaron and Arthur, however, are quite the dedicated soccer aficionados and their shared knowledge of the players and teams made the games even more interesting to watch.

Tuesday morning, Aaron and Arthur got up early and managed to secure the three of us tickets to the Netherlands/Denmark match.  We said goodbye to Josh who was headed back to Zambia, then raced over to the Soccer City stadium, pushed through the gates along with some 85,000 other fans, and got to our seats just minutes after the opening kick.  It was an exciting match and the throngs of orange-clad Dutch fans in our section were obviously quite pleased with the 2-0 result.

After the match, we expected some challenges leaving the stadium with our 85,000 fellow attendees, but the task was made slightly more difficult by an unexpected strike by a large group of bus drivers who were supposed to be transporting people to and from the stadium.  We eventually got back to the city center by way of a packed train, some apprehensive wandering through a decidedly non-touristy neighborhood, and a short but greatly appreciated cab ride.

While watching the evening’s Italy/Paraguay match in a bar, we met a very intelligent, seemingly-friendly guy who claimed to be a cameraman for SABC and after many hours of talking, offered to hook us up with tickets to the Brazil/Korea PDR match the next night.  Long story short, he ended up with our passport numbers and $20 from each of us, and we watched the Brazil match from the bar at our hostel.

My final day in Johannesburg, we went to the Apartheid Museum, which was really massive and impressive (yeah, sorry, not feeling very descriptive today), then I bid farewell to Aaron and Arthur, went to the airport and got on this plane.  Ta-da: end of trip!

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You know what?  Now that were at the reflective wrap-up section of the post, I really don’t have much that I feel the need to share.  It’s been an incredible trip and I’ve met some great people and seen some amazing thing.  I’m sure it’s changed me, but I don’t know yet quite how.  Maybe I’ll write one final post when I start to figure that out—or maybe you’ll get a bunch more posts if my job prospects don’t pan out and I decide to high-tail it down to Central and South America at the end of the summer to do some more traveling and work on my Spanish.  Either way, thanks so much for reading this blog over these past months.  Knowing that I had you all following along with my adventures gave me the push I needed to make the effort to really chronicle this journey and I’m sure I’ll treasure the record in the years ahead.   Thanks again, and I hope to see most of you very soon!