So our saturday started off by visiting beach at Durban, as well as the Ushaka Water park. The water park was most likely comparable to a soak city... just less rides and more Kanye and Miley playing in the background... sadly. However, after successfully going on all the rides (except the big one that's just a straight drop- no thank you wedgie) we spent the rest of the day hanging on the beach. It's amazing just how much warmer the water is here, thank you equator- but really thanks. It literally felt like I was taking a bath. Minus the fact that the current was ridiculously strong. They had about a hundred meter area designated for swimmers, kind of like what they do at Mission with the flags, but significantly less of an area to swim. Also, instead of kind of splitting the beach in two between surfers and swimmers they had multiple designated areas sectioned out all the ways down the beach. However, after not being in the water long I realized why- the waves were sooooo strong! Luckily I am a pretty good swimmer and have master the technique of "plug the nose and dive for dear life," so fortunately I was able to simply dive under the quite MASSIVE waves. However, there were definitely some people in our group who were strugglin'. Of course though not the hawaii boy, colton, who somehow managed to dominate every wave and body surf his way back to shore. Meanwhile the rest of us were definitely struggling to even stay standing. It was amazing too just how tired we got after only being in the water about an hour. Not only that, but the extreme sun rays down here have about.. triple the power of those back home and one little slip up of forgetting to re-apply the sunscreen was a bad mistake. Red shoulders and burnt nose later and I learned my mistake.
After going to the beach though we went to an official sharks rugby game. Ever seen Invictus? Yea, I sat in that stadium. And it was awesome! Not only that but the game was really good too. Bonus! It was south africa (obviously) vs New Zealand. I of course wore my shark backpack in support. It was funny though because this being, for most of us, our first rugby game we wore face paint and decked out in black and white.. somehow.. as always..most of the boys failed to wear shirts at all... and yet we were the only ones with this much excitement. In the end this only made us stick out more as Americans... having the guys in our group attempt to start a wave didn't help either.
However, the game of rugby is certainly a fascinating sport. It's a lot like football in that the concept is the same, with plays and such, it just is far more fast past. So they start the play, and you can only pass the ball backward or to the side, you can also kick the ball in an attempt to get it further down the field. The way they do throw ins is also interesting because they will have both teams line up on either side facing each other and lift on another in the air in order to catch the ball as it is thrown in by another player. I officially give mad props to rugby players because they not only have to be fit enough to get the crap kicked out of them but also in good enough condition to play for a whole game.
