Wherever you are in the world if the Springboks are playing an international you have to make every effort to make sure that you watch it. On Saturday the boys played against Wales and much research had gone into the start time and a venue in which we could watch. Four of us, all South Africans, set off after breakfast for the cricket ground and the sports bar therein called “All Out”. We were told that the game started at 10h00 on Fox Sports but we were only aware that the billing was simply ‘International Rugby’. Johnnie VT (VT), Louw (camera 2), Mani (camera 10) and me arrived at the bar at 09h40 and settled in to await the start of the game.

Imagine our disappointment when on the stroke of ten we were greeted with pictures of a rugby ground but the two teams lined up for the national anthems were Fiji and Australia!! I ‘phoned Tony Hofmann (a good friend and also a cameraman but not on this tour) back in Cape Town who told us that the game had started at 09h30 and the Boks were 16-6 down. No problem, plan B which on reflection should have been plan A, we hurried back to the hotel and once again after a few expletives these engineering boffins managed to hook up to the game through their laptops and channel it through onto the TV screen in Mani’s room. I swear that if we had been in the middle of the Gobi desert, these guys would have found a way of watching the game!!

That evening it was off to Arapita Ave which is the street that I told you about before that has all the restaurants, bars and clubs in and where we had such an excellent meal at Angelo’s. Saturday night however, it was to be Satchmo’s about three doors down from Angelo’s. In attendance was Kate (production manager), Alex or ‘Jacko’ (surname, Jackson) who is Kate’s soul mate and assistant on the tour, Ben (Hawkeye) and me. Now I don’t often demand to see the chef because I am very easy to please when it comes to food but that night I decided that it was imperative that I had a word on behalf of all four of us. Kate and Ben had steak, Jacko and I had a Salmon dish with a sauce. Now it looked brilliant in the picture on the menu and as I ordered it I was aware of the old saying of ‘never judge a book by its cover’ but I had no idea that salmon could be so delicious!! So, the chef was duly congratulated, two bottles of red wine were consumed and we had one standing up at Shakers, a dodgy looking pub across the road.

My only complaint for the night was that the jazz quartet who played beautifully in the background didn’t know how to play ‘What a Wonderful World’ and we were in Satchmo’s!!!