Cavemen, Sharks, and Water

These past couple of weeks have been some of the most fun I have had in my entire life! To begin, I found out last week that my computer is a hard drive issue, so I will therefore not have it for the rest of the semester. Apparently this is in God’s plan however, so I’m just going to take things as they come. I've been in good spirits about all of it, although it got pretty tricky last week since the semester is winding down and I had two projects and three 8+ page papers due. I got it all done in time though, and I am ready for finals next week! I can’t believe my semester is almost over already.

To give more detail about the statement above, I suppose I can share what the past couple of weeks have consisted of. On the 12^th, our whole group went to the Drakensberg Mountains in KwaZulu-Natal province. After the two-hour drive, we were all more than ready to hike. So, as a part of the first group to go up the mountain path, we hiked, climbed rocks, stood in a river, and eventually made it to the top where there was a tour of the Sani Bushmen cave paintings. It was interesting to see depictions of scenes that happened centuries ago, but I mostly wanted to climb the rocks, so I did not pay as close attention to our guide. On the way down, we went a different way so that we could walk next to the river. At one point a group of ten or so girls stayed behind to play in the river, in which the current was ridiculously strong. We were there for about half and hour when a group of guys came back to join us. I think they were jealous that we were being more adventurous than they were, so they needed to show us up… or something like that. During this river stay, a small group of six of us (Carmen, Destiny, Jessie, Mack, Tyler, and myself) decided to boulder up this rather large, well, boulder. We then stood atop said rock until the second group caught up with us. Some joined in the river, others joined on the rock, and fun was had by all. We all finally made our way back after being there for an hour or so, and enjoyed the two-hour nap time back to our campus.

The next weekend, on the 19th, we had a trip planned to Durban to go to uShaka Marine World and the beach. The marine world was half water park, half Sea World, and we had a day pass to both, which meant we had freedom to go in and out of the park. We spent the morning at the water park, and did all of the rides, including two slides that were nearly vertical drops. They had ridiculous names like “stomach drop” or “volcano” or something cute and cheesy like that, but I think they should have been named “wedgie” and “bigger wedgie”, because no matter how much material your suit had, it was all bundled into places it shouldn’t have been by the end. Either way, it was a rush, and it may have prepared me a little bit for bungie jumping in the future.

We spent the afternoon in the very warm Indian ocean getting battered by waves right and left. The current for this area was also very strong, and I think Mitch phrased it well when he said, “it’s like you’re taking one step forward, two steps back, and three steps left”. It was salty fun! We stayed in this part of Durban until 15:00, when we all left to go to a rugby game starting around 17:00. This gave us just enough time to change and don the war paint for the Shark’s match. We were pretty much in the nosebleed section, but this meant we were protected by the lots of rain that fell for most of the game. It was very fun to try and follow the game, and it was even better that the Sharks won! To top off the great weekend, we watched Invictus on Sunday night. It was certainly fitting.

This weekend, I went on a field trip to Lesotho, but I have to dedicate a whole new post to that because it was so fun. I will be sure to do so in the next two days.

Cheers.

P.S. The people who play rugby are men, and very attractive ones at that. (Patrick Lambie #10.)