Dean Parisian
Active Member
- Messages
- 440
Many months ago I was sitting in my office and got an inquiry from my wife. ?Honey, any interest in going to South Africa for the World Cup?? she asked. My reply, ?I'm in?. So it was. The beginning of our 2010 vacation. We had saved our money for a couple of years for a big vacation and were ready to get the boys out into the wide world and make priceless memories. Booking flight tickets these days via the internet is almost a joke. The nonsense and algorithms that the average traveler has to endure is truly a rip-off. Day after day I tried to buy reasonable priced seats online on Delta to no avail. I wasn?t about to pay my left leg and right arm and finally, bingo. I saved almost 33% on seats because I didn't give up and kept trying. Somebody finally had changed an algo for the booking sites to sell some seats at a decent price and I jumped on them. When America was ready to start the fireworks on the evening of July 4th, I was sitting here, on the tarmac of Atlanta?s massive airport staring out the window of a Boeing 777 and waiting for the 16-hour plane ride to be over.
After a long take-off roll we were in the air and headed southeast on a straight non-stop route to Johannesburg. The flight was full and I had a window seat to attempt to get some sleep. In 1988 I had been to New Zealand and Australia on some long hauls, back when the airlines allowed smoking on board and one couldn't see the back of the plane from the front for the blue haze. How those flight attendants are still alive amazes me. This was going to be an adventure and I probably slept about 8 hours during the flight. For some reason maybe going back to my days in law school when I could literally sleep at a desk with my head on a law book I don't have a problem sleeping anywhere.
Our first night in ?Joberg? as Johannesburg is called we stayed well outside the city, almost 45 miles out simply because it was cheaper and all the good hotels in the city had been booked years in advance for the World Cup which is played every 4 years. This hotel sits on the Vaal River and was a nice clean hotel with a professional staff and good security.
Security is important in South Africa, in fact all of Africa because of the rampant crime. Remember, South Africa AVERAGES 50 murders a DAY. (99.9% being black on black crime in the shanty towns full of illiterate, violent, drug-induced mayhem). These shanty towns remind me of growing up on the Ft. Berthold Indian reservation in western ND and the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in western SD. So much illiteracy and poverty. The government can't help them, they have to get it done themselves.
I was told that many times when the government builds the black South Africans new housing units they are soon sold, the proceeds pocketed and the families then move back to the shanty towns.
In the southern hemisphere it is now winter. Finding winter clothes in the heat of July was rather hard but hey, one has to be prepared and I know where some hunting clothes are at all times. It doesn't snow much in the entire country of South Africa but like Montana in December, when the sun goes down the temperatures plummet. Many years ago I coached soccer teams and enjoyed the game. Many many years ago I had season tickets to the San Diego Sockers professional soccer team and enjoyed watching the sport. Wow, no wonder this is such a world class event. Professional soccer players play the game with such speed, dexterity and finesse that it almost defies imagination. Without trying to convert all of you to become life-long spectators of such a great sport let me just say there is a myriad of reasons why it is the world?s most followed sport and why pro soccer players are on par with Tiger Woods in making money. Here?s a picture of my family, with vuvuzela in tow, ready to head into a World Cup game.
I was proud for South Africa in putting together such a fantastic World Cup event. They did so good. The world-class stadiums, the airports, the security, the planning, the venues, all of it was world class. I have been to a couple of Olympics, a couple Super Bowls and this event truly exceeded my expectations. The engineering in the stadiums was really special. The infrastructure is in place. May the socialist black government of South Africa continue to do the right thing. (sound familiar America?) Their future is theirs to make. They can either make the headline or be the headline. The rest of Africa looks to South Africa. Joberg is the New York of Africa. I pray that for the millions of Africans, progress moves forward rather quickly.
One of the many things we wanted to do was to get into a large national park and get on a photo-safari. Well, easier said than done but we got it done. We did our time ?in the bush? both in the air and on the ground.
It was my first time up in a hot-air balloon and what a beautiful morning to be one?s inaugural flight. African game was abundant in this park and with hundreds of square miles of nothing but nothing the big-game was spectacular. The great success story of Africa is the rino and how they were knocked back to a couple hundred animals and now they number in the thousands but the anti-poaching units are working feverishly to slow down the poachers.
My wife and I in the balloon and our sons, Jordan, 13 and Hunter, 18.
Here is a rino that bluff-charged our truck and got my attention real quick!
Other observations that interested me, in no particular order were the massive size and strength of lions, they are truly the king of beasts, the short gestation period of lions, 3 months, the beautiful fish eagles, the great bird life of South Africa in the winter, the scream of a startled bull elephant which will really get your hair standing up, the noises that a herd of elephants will make at night, the number of deaths across Africa from marauding hippo?s, the entire country of South Africa being so totally laden with coal, diamond, platinum, and gold mines. Also, the lack of obesity, never saw a fat person anywhere in South Africa, not one, the large number of young blacks as I never saw an older black man with grey hair, the life spans are short there for a lot of reasons, how eating crocodile is like eating chicken because they feed the crocs chicken, how the hunting industry has saved game herds across all of Africa from extinction, the beauty of sable and the ability of hippo to just plain stay underwater for what seemed like forever??..
And the size of elephant dung???..wow, imagine how good would that feel?
Speaking of elephants, we saw a lot of them, played with them and rode them???
Jordans elephant kiss???..
We took a lot of pictures, played with some kitty and had the best vacation of our lives.
We loved the soccer and the spirit of nationalism and sportsmanship. The lack of commercialization was right up my alley. For anyone who has attended a Super Bowl in America you know how boring the game can be sitting in the stadium for all of the 3-minute commercial breaks and you don't even get to watch all of the great TV advertisements on the jumbo-trons. Soccer goes all out folks, no time outs for Bud commercials or McDonalds. I loved the spirit of how the fans got behind their respective national teams. We got into the spirit as well although every team we rooted for lost. Here is my wife cheering for the Netherlands in the final against Spain!
One of the better highlights of the World Cup was seeing and cheering for Nelson Madela, now 92 years young and a Nobel Peace prize winner. Here is Mr. Mandela at the final game???.
I couldn't help but to think of the absolute vast difference between all of the good Mr. Mandela did for Africa, South Africa and the world and what very little the Kenyan, Barry Soetero aka President Teleprompter has done for America. Please Mr. President just what the hell are we doing in Afghanistan anyway besides protecting the trillion dollars of minerals our government said were ?just discovered? there? Yeah, right.
The final game of the 2010 FIFA World Cup between Spain and the Netherlans featured Shakira in the opening ceremony. She is not that hard on the eyes, believe me. Why more people around the world don't take good binoculars to sporting events is way way way beyond me. Good optics are key for police, wardens, TN Volunteer games, spectators of every sporting event from water polo to horse racing and hunters of every persuation. I think I was the only guy out of three World Cup stadiums that wore binoculars.
The sound of vuvuzelas is far more obnoxious listening to them on television than it is in the stadiums during the games. We had fun doing our thing with them as well???
As our time in South Africa wore down we enjoyed the big surf of the Indian Ocean.
I was glad to be headed back to America instead of the rest of the world????I was ready for my own bed, my own house, my own life and my life work????
On a 1 to 10 scale I tell my friends this vacation was a 13???.there will always be wonderful things to see in South Africa and those animals are always on the lookout as well??..
I would love to be in Brazil in 4 years for the next World Cup. I'll keep dreaming big dreams and maybe it will come true but hey, the thought of a heavy, 30-inch muley buck weighs heavily on my mind always. Hopefully by the the time I reach 60 my goal may happen as I am on 56th Street now.
I'm going back to work, I hope you have enjoyed our family vacation to South Africa.
Dean Parisian, July, 2010
http://chippewapartners.blogspot.com/index.html
After a long take-off roll we were in the air and headed southeast on a straight non-stop route to Johannesburg. The flight was full and I had a window seat to attempt to get some sleep. In 1988 I had been to New Zealand and Australia on some long hauls, back when the airlines allowed smoking on board and one couldn't see the back of the plane from the front for the blue haze. How those flight attendants are still alive amazes me. This was going to be an adventure and I probably slept about 8 hours during the flight. For some reason maybe going back to my days in law school when I could literally sleep at a desk with my head on a law book I don't have a problem sleeping anywhere.
Our first night in ?Joberg? as Johannesburg is called we stayed well outside the city, almost 45 miles out simply because it was cheaper and all the good hotels in the city had been booked years in advance for the World Cup which is played every 4 years. This hotel sits on the Vaal River and was a nice clean hotel with a professional staff and good security.
Security is important in South Africa, in fact all of Africa because of the rampant crime. Remember, South Africa AVERAGES 50 murders a DAY. (99.9% being black on black crime in the shanty towns full of illiterate, violent, drug-induced mayhem). These shanty towns remind me of growing up on the Ft. Berthold Indian reservation in western ND and the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in western SD. So much illiteracy and poverty. The government can't help them, they have to get it done themselves.
I was told that many times when the government builds the black South Africans new housing units they are soon sold, the proceeds pocketed and the families then move back to the shanty towns.
In the southern hemisphere it is now winter. Finding winter clothes in the heat of July was rather hard but hey, one has to be prepared and I know where some hunting clothes are at all times. It doesn't snow much in the entire country of South Africa but like Montana in December, when the sun goes down the temperatures plummet. Many years ago I coached soccer teams and enjoyed the game. Many many years ago I had season tickets to the San Diego Sockers professional soccer team and enjoyed watching the sport. Wow, no wonder this is such a world class event. Professional soccer players play the game with such speed, dexterity and finesse that it almost defies imagination. Without trying to convert all of you to become life-long spectators of such a great sport let me just say there is a myriad of reasons why it is the world?s most followed sport and why pro soccer players are on par with Tiger Woods in making money. Here?s a picture of my family, with vuvuzela in tow, ready to head into a World Cup game.
I was proud for South Africa in putting together such a fantastic World Cup event. They did so good. The world-class stadiums, the airports, the security, the planning, the venues, all of it was world class. I have been to a couple of Olympics, a couple Super Bowls and this event truly exceeded my expectations. The engineering in the stadiums was really special. The infrastructure is in place. May the socialist black government of South Africa continue to do the right thing. (sound familiar America?) Their future is theirs to make. They can either make the headline or be the headline. The rest of Africa looks to South Africa. Joberg is the New York of Africa. I pray that for the millions of Africans, progress moves forward rather quickly.
One of the many things we wanted to do was to get into a large national park and get on a photo-safari. Well, easier said than done but we got it done. We did our time ?in the bush? both in the air and on the ground.
It was my first time up in a hot-air balloon and what a beautiful morning to be one?s inaugural flight. African game was abundant in this park and with hundreds of square miles of nothing but nothing the big-game was spectacular. The great success story of Africa is the rino and how they were knocked back to a couple hundred animals and now they number in the thousands but the anti-poaching units are working feverishly to slow down the poachers.
My wife and I in the balloon and our sons, Jordan, 13 and Hunter, 18.
Here is a rino that bluff-charged our truck and got my attention real quick!
Other observations that interested me, in no particular order were the massive size and strength of lions, they are truly the king of beasts, the short gestation period of lions, 3 months, the beautiful fish eagles, the great bird life of South Africa in the winter, the scream of a startled bull elephant which will really get your hair standing up, the noises that a herd of elephants will make at night, the number of deaths across Africa from marauding hippo?s, the entire country of South Africa being so totally laden with coal, diamond, platinum, and gold mines. Also, the lack of obesity, never saw a fat person anywhere in South Africa, not one, the large number of young blacks as I never saw an older black man with grey hair, the life spans are short there for a lot of reasons, how eating crocodile is like eating chicken because they feed the crocs chicken, how the hunting industry has saved game herds across all of Africa from extinction, the beauty of sable and the ability of hippo to just plain stay underwater for what seemed like forever??..
And the size of elephant dung???..wow, imagine how good would that feel?
Speaking of elephants, we saw a lot of them, played with them and rode them???
Jordans elephant kiss???..
We took a lot of pictures, played with some kitty and had the best vacation of our lives.
We loved the soccer and the spirit of nationalism and sportsmanship. The lack of commercialization was right up my alley. For anyone who has attended a Super Bowl in America you know how boring the game can be sitting in the stadium for all of the 3-minute commercial breaks and you don't even get to watch all of the great TV advertisements on the jumbo-trons. Soccer goes all out folks, no time outs for Bud commercials or McDonalds. I loved the spirit of how the fans got behind their respective national teams. We got into the spirit as well although every team we rooted for lost. Here is my wife cheering for the Netherlands in the final against Spain!
One of the better highlights of the World Cup was seeing and cheering for Nelson Madela, now 92 years young and a Nobel Peace prize winner. Here is Mr. Mandela at the final game???.
I couldn't help but to think of the absolute vast difference between all of the good Mr. Mandela did for Africa, South Africa and the world and what very little the Kenyan, Barry Soetero aka President Teleprompter has done for America. Please Mr. President just what the hell are we doing in Afghanistan anyway besides protecting the trillion dollars of minerals our government said were ?just discovered? there? Yeah, right.
The final game of the 2010 FIFA World Cup between Spain and the Netherlans featured Shakira in the opening ceremony. She is not that hard on the eyes, believe me. Why more people around the world don't take good binoculars to sporting events is way way way beyond me. Good optics are key for police, wardens, TN Volunteer games, spectators of every sporting event from water polo to horse racing and hunters of every persuation. I think I was the only guy out of three World Cup stadiums that wore binoculars.
The sound of vuvuzelas is far more obnoxious listening to them on television than it is in the stadiums during the games. We had fun doing our thing with them as well???
As our time in South Africa wore down we enjoyed the big surf of the Indian Ocean.
I was glad to be headed back to America instead of the rest of the world????I was ready for my own bed, my own house, my own life and my life work????
On a 1 to 10 scale I tell my friends this vacation was a 13???.there will always be wonderful things to see in South Africa and those animals are always on the lookout as well??..
I would love to be in Brazil in 4 years for the next World Cup. I'll keep dreaming big dreams and maybe it will come true but hey, the thought of a heavy, 30-inch muley buck weighs heavily on my mind always. Hopefully by the the time I reach 60 my goal may happen as I am on 56th Street now.
I'm going back to work, I hope you have enjoyed our family vacation to South Africa.
Dean Parisian, July, 2010
http://chippewapartners.blogspot.com/index.html
