Surfing

I went surfing on Saturday. Let me rephrase, I took my first surfing lesson on Saturday. Solidea and I signed up for a lesson, were each given an enormous board that I could barely get my arm around to carry, and two instructors to show us what to do. We got to practice on the sand first - you know, the embarrassing part where you jump up and down on the board in front of the people who know how to surf - then it was into the water. wow, those boards are hard to move, even in the water. Granted, my board was 12 feet long and nearly as wide, so maybe once I can stand up on that I can work my way down to a smaller, more maneuverable board.

Once I got the hang of actually staying on the board and paddling at the same time, I had to stop a few times to rest because I am sooooo out of shape. We finally got close to where the instructor wanted to be. I was no help, in fact, I was a terrible student. The whole time I felt nervous. We were swimming out to big waves with big white crests and I didn´t like that, so I kept asking questions, ¨Where are we going?¨ ¨Why are we going to such big waves?¨¨How do you steer this thing?¨ ¨What do I do when I´m on the wave?¨¨Aren´t there rocks over here?¨ And so on. We finally got close enough to catch a wave and he gave my board a push to get me started. After that there was no stopping me, as the guy who paddled in front of me found out. :) Luckily, he is a more experienced surfer, could tell I was new (all the new people lay flat on the board) and paddled a bit more quickly to get out of my way!

The wave peetered out and I paddled back out with my instructor to catch another. I got on another wave with another push from my instructor and this time the wave didn´t peeter out before the shore. In fact, I came in really fast and realized that if I didn´t stop somehow I would ruin the fin of the board on the rocks. Not yet knowing how to steer, I just rolled off - just like when sledding! And the wave didn´t kill me, so that was nice.

Once I got to shore I lugged my board onto the sand and kindly declined another foray into the waves even though I still had 10 min left of my lesson. My arms were dead and the joy of riding a wave wasn´t enough to make me try and swim out again. We went boogie boarding later in the day. That was much easier and a ton of fun.

I´m still going to learn how to surf. We both are. We just need to work at it more, get in shape a little, and utilize all the free surf lessons offered to us over the weekend! Knowing how to speak English and practicing with the local surf instructors is a great way to get free lessons here - FYI.