Blankets replace bikinis at winter World Cup (Feature)

By Clare Byrne Jun 16, 2010, 16:22 GMT

Johannesburg - After three decades of football in the sun, the love of fans for the beautiful game is being put to the test at the first winter World Cup in 32 years.

Temperatures in South Africa plummeted this week, where a cold front slammed into Cape Town first, drenching an Italy-Paraguay game in freezing rain and then advanced north and east, dumping snow on the mountains and engulfing the central highveld (high plateau) in a

bone-numbing chill.

South Africa always gets a cold snap in winter, and a dollop of snow on high ground.

Temperatures fell to -5 Celsius in the central city of Bloemfontein and -2 in Johannesburg overnight Tuesday, sparking a run on hats, scarves and gloves by tens of thousands of football visitors.

Brazilian female football fans had never looked so ample as they waded into Johannesburg's Ellis Park stadium wrapped in yellow hats and blankets over layers of thermals for the Selecao's first World Cup game against North Korea.

As the mercury dipped below zero and a glacial wind coursed through the roofless stadium, the crowd kept erupting in Mexican waves to keep warm.

'It's so cold!' exclaimed Aline Santiago from Rio, shaking her fan's headdress of yellow-and-blue feathers.

'If it stays cold like this, England will win. They like the cold,' a local driver for a German TV crew said confidently.

While many football fans were suddenly eyeing up Durban, an Indian Ocean city which touts itself as the warmest place to spend the tournament, others were taking the chill on the chin and heading for the slopes.

Afri-Ski resort in Lesotho, a tiny mountain kingdom entirely surrounded by South Africa, told the German Press Agency, dpa it had received a number of bookings from World Cup tourists.

The resort, which is situated at a little over 3,300 metres in the Maluti mountains and is a 4.5-hour drive from Johannesburg, was founded by an Austrian.

Since opening two weeks ago, the station, which claims to be sub-Saharan Africa's biggest, has received a number of bookings from Brazilians, Americans and Britons, as well as the usual supply of South Africans.

South Africa also has a small ski resort in the central Drakensberg Mountains, which border Lesotho.

Nestled between peaks reaching over 3,000 metres, Tiffendell's manager Stephen Beak said the resort has had its best snowfall in 10 years this week and that its heated timber chalets were also filling up fast.

By contrast, the chill was putting a dampener on things at a tent city for budget World Cup travellers in Johannesburg.

'We're pretty quiet here,' Barry MacKay, a consultant at Tent City in the north of the city told dpa. The camp ground sleeps 1,280 but so far occupancy had peaked at around 150.

'This weather doesn't help if you're camping,' said MacKay.

A group of Danes found one way to keep warm in the unheated tents before heading off to forage for game in Kruger National Park, a vast savannah game park in the warmer north-east.

'They were very comfortable,' says Mackay, explaining: 'There was a lot of alcohol.'