Hospitality in South Africa continues to surprise

South Africa is busy. Everywhere you travel, flights are full and hotel 'vacancy' lights are switched off. Restaurants are heaving with hungry hordes and hailing, ordering, or even finding, a taxi is nigh on impossible on match days.

I'm in Port Elizabeth (PE) for England's crunch match with Slovenia today and, thankfully, I have a car, full stomach and place to stay tonight. My journey here, however, was somewhat more arduous.

I set off from my place in Cape Town, where I was been based for the last week, at 11am on Monday. Having re-mastered the art of manual driving just in time to drop my rental car off at the airport, I boarded a flight for Port Elizabeth - via Johannesburg.

That's right, a six-hour round-trip journey to a destination only 90 minutes flying time from Cape Town. It was that or an eight-hour, through the night journey by car. No thanks.

My three-hour lay-over in Jo'burg - the connecting flight, British Airways of course, was delayed - actually gave me just enough time to watch South Africa's crunch match against France though, so I, unlike the Les Blues camp throughout what must be their worst World Cup campaign on record, wasn't complaining.

After suffering Bafana Bafana heartbreak in a rowdy airport restaurant, I trudged, despondent and craving comfort fast-food, to my Port Elizabeth-bound plane.

Having originally intended to sleep in the rental car I was picking up in PE, salvation arrived when a friend from Dubai, who I had met up with in Cape Town the night before, gave me his girlfriend Tanya's half-brother's telephone number. "Try him," said Scott. "He's got space, you never know."

So I did. Amazingly, the Collett's, my new best friends - you haven't seen my rental car - came through. I arrived after 11pm and Chris, the man of the house, welcomed a very apologetic and 'sorry for putting you out' yours truly with open arms. "Lecker bru, we're happy to oblige." With Chris's wife, kids and numerous animals all bedded down for the night, I was impressed.

The hospitality of the African people, no matter their creed, colour or ethnicity, continues to determine my World Cup journey. In Johannesburg and Rustenburg, the gracious friendliness of everyone I met eroded any Afro-pessimism I had about the World Cup's host nation.

Thus far, my experiences in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, magnificent as they have been, have confirmed what I thought after only a fortnight in the country: forget the scare-mongerers, the Rainbow Nation is the only place to be this summer.

A small kid, however, did try to dampen things when I stopped off at a petrol station on my way to the Collett's. As I came out of the station's adjoining shop, the wee lad - he couldn't have been taller than my navel - strolled up to me and said: "Give me your wallet!" Thinking how 'jog on' would be interpreted, I went for the rather more simple: "No."

It did the trick as the canny boy stumbled off mumbling: "OK then." Or something to that effect. Brilliant. Even the cashiers were laughing.