The Paintball Tournament

So Internet access has been fairly limited. According the the staff at our hotel, the copper wires were stolen which makes it tough to use the Internet, much less make a phone call.

Friday
We all slept late and woke up thinking everyone else left them. After we sorted that out we headed out to grab some food on the way to the Rand show. We ate at some German style restaurant, and enjoyed some delish Ostrich meats, Kudu ( a kind of antelope) and some spareribs. All the food here is very inexpensive especially the meats. A 350gram (10oz) filet runs around $10. Headed to the Rand show after lunch to walk the field. It is a single field setup with the Malaga Millenium setup. Driving home Tom Cole got us lost despite the fact that he has a GPS. Africa is a little crazy there are definitly people all over the highways, on the way back to the hotel there were people walking the wrong way down the middle lane of the highway. We showered up and headed into Jo'burg for some awesome authentic Pakistani food with Ridwaan ( of Blades and Triggers) and Dawid from Unleashed. Had a superb lamb dish, with plenty of hot naan bread.


Saturday
Woke up early which was a little miserable with the jet lag as it felt like the middle of the night. Had some breakfast at the hotel some peach yogurt, omelets and hotdogs. Our first paintball game was a little rough as Unleashed really put it on us and we ended up losing to them and they had 4 left alive. The level of ball here is definitley comparable to people in the states. We ended up going 3-3 on the day losing to Reapers and Black. Got lost again headed home, nothing like a 30 minute drive turning into a hour after a full day of paintball. We went straight to a steakhouse without showering. On the way there Tom signaled into the right lane and missed a head on collision by literally about 1 foot. He shrugged it right off but he was close. Vinnie, JP and me would have had a tough time playing 3 on 7 on Sunday but luckily Tom swerved out of the way. Driving on the other side of the road has been a little bit of a challenge. The odd part was the guy that was heading towards him never slowed down once. Slept like a baby because there was a huge T-storm, the rain on the thatch roof was super cool.

Sunday
Our first game was at 8 am we shook the sleep out of our eyes and posted a win. Unfortunatley the next 2 werent that good and we lost to Awsim and Impact. Knowing we were on the bubble we finally put together a good game plan and smashed Dynamix, but it was too little too late. We ended up missing the cut going 5-5, and finishing 5th. The top 4 teams were Unleashed, Reapers, Dynamix and Awsim. In a final very intense game of the semi final round robin, where Dynamix was beating reapers 5 on 2, the Reapers held strong and brought it down to a 1 on 1. Despite putting himself in a bad spot the Dynamix player made it all good with a spectacular over the top single snap shot to get them in to play for the grand prize. So it was Unleashed vs Reapers for 3rd and 4th and Dynamix vs Awsim for 1st and 2nd. In a controversial 3 game series the Reapers ended up beating Unleashed to take 3rd, while Awsim beat Dynamix in 2 games to take 1st. Overall it was a great tournament and all the players were super nice and very friendly. It was disappointing to not do better but things like that happen sometimes. We are leaving now to head up to some National Park, but I will post asap with the rest of Sunday and Monday as well as some more pictures.