Day 2: Following the late night the only thing that was missing was sleep. Despite only 3 hours of rest and an 8 a.m. start we were all looking
forward to the next leg of our weekend activity getaway. We had an hour’s travel to Latsi (North
of Pafos) where we had rented out a boat for the afternoon.
By the time we arrived at the coast you could feel the suspense and eagerness to get started. The summer heat
was onto us and we just wanted to dive into the sea and cool down a little. But first things first, we got that cool box
filled up with ice and beer. Once we saw the boat we knew that it had been worth the wait. It was more than we had bargained for, and we knew that once away from shore we were
in for a decent time.
So we were all aboard and ready to go. Gio, one
of the ’infamous six’ was going to sail us out. We had our booze, inflatable
ring, water skis, and our music jamming. We started out by cruising and then made
a couple of stops to sunbathe and swim, most notably at the blue lagoon, before
we started with the water sports.
First up the inflatable ring. What do you get with Gio steering the boat and one of us on the ring? A crazy guy crashing upon waves, and swerving 180 just to make
the other either bounce off the ring or swallow some sea water. After all of us got a turn on the ‘crazy
ride’ it was time to ski. Now this was my first time and decided to do it with
one ski. The result….fail. Then I tried with two skis. The result….fail. I was
always of the opinion that I could do anything if I put my mind to it, but it sure is harder than it looks. There I
was, with no balance or composure at
all, and when the boat slowly accelerated instead of slowly coming up onto
surface I was just sinking deeper. Either way, it was a good laugh and well worth the camera shots. We topped our day
off with lunch at a local restaurant before heading for the villa where we would all get a
little rest in.
In the evening we had a
paintballing session set up. It was 9 p.m. when we got there. The venue itself was
pretty impressive hosting three battlefields filled with barrels, abandoned
cars, worn down shacks and floodlights were turned on giving the total
experience a little bit more twist. Before we got started though we were given
a briefing of what we can (basically mouth expletives) and can’t do (shoot
in the sensitive areas) from the instructor before we were handed out our gear
and split into two teams of five, the only distinction between the two teams being the different colored helmets.
We fuelled ourselves with Jager shots before entering the battleground and getting into
position. Once the ref gave the go ahead I must confess to thoughts of camping it out to make sure I was the last man standing from my team and and gain bragging rights as the survivor of the team. But when I saw my team mates go
for it I did the opposite and went gung ho.
The first of the five battles was over and we
were in for a long night. We left the field giving each other banter followed
by more shots and downing beers to prepare for round two. This time,
after being accustomed to the field there was more thought going into the general
strategy, initial positioning of each paintballer, where we would attack from,
who was going to cover and who was going to sacrifice himself for the benefit of
the team and go all solo without a game plan! Tiredness combined with alcohol had started to take its toll but we kept going on pure adrenaline.
Past midnight and after round five, a declared
winner, 4 pints down, 3 jager shots and buzzing ears from who did what and ‘I
killed you but your too much of a chicken-sh*t to admit it’ we sat down on a bench
outside the briefing room where the hosts prepared a bbq for all of us. The
hosts of the venue were just great and let us do our own thing and enjoy the
whole experience. Good company, guns, booze and all you can eat. What more did
we need?
