Posted by Chris Jones

SOMEWHERE ON THE ROAD TO DURBAN, South Africa -- I'm in the front seat beside Jan again. We've been on the road a lot together, and now we settle in like old friends, squinting into the sun. This time, there is also an American with us in the van, as well as an Englishman, a Mexican and an Argentine. This is the World Cup, the home stretch, and together we smell like goats.

The last time Jan and I drove together, it was to Bloemfontein, a piteous drive through the night. This time, we're going to Durban, to watch Spain play Germany, and we've just passed the small town of Warden, and we're into God's country now. It's a perfect afternoon, warm and blue skies, and once we pushed through Johannesburg's suburbs -- "Out of the claws of Johannesburg," Jan likes to say -- it felt as though we'd been released. We rolled through long stretches of brown fields, scorched by fire breaks, cows standing in bunches, little windmills turning. It was wide open.

Now we're somewhere else. It's still brown, but the rolling hills have turned into flat-topped mountains, what we would call mesas, rising up over the fields like castles. There aren't many trees, mostly just grass, interrupted by fences and power lines and another mountain around every bend. It looks like Arizona would look if Arizona were more brown than red. It is stunning country.

We were just talking in the van about the chasm that exists between South Africa's reputation and its reality. There are problems here, serious problems, but over the past month I've been selfishly happy here. I've missed home when it's been quiet, but it's so rarely been quiet. For me, South Africa will be a collection of good memories, of World Cup soccer and of life outside stadiums, of lions in the distance and road trips with Jan.

I can't believe it's almost over. I can't believe this is the last time we'll be in the van.

The sun is low enough to be golden now, and I'm listening to Sigur Ros as I write, with my new friends behind me, and I know that I'm living through a moment that I'll remember forever. I've had a month of days like this one now, when every day has felt like I'm doing something I've never done and might never do again, and I'm so lucky to have had that chance. It's been so much more than I ever hoped it might have been.

Right now -- right now, right this very second -- I can see a thousand miles toward the ocean, across a hundred folds in the earth -- and I'm trying to take it all in and spit it back out as words, and I'm failing. Justice is impossible.

I'm not worried about forgetting this place -- I could never forget it; I'm just worried that I won't be able to remember it without feeling as though this was it for me, that this was as good as a working life gets.