I am in love…

25/08/11

I woke early and excited as it was surf lesson day. At the allotted time chickens alarm sounded and out came an extremely dishevelled and hung over man. With his flies down, red eyes and a monster hangover he looked rough. To add to the equation he had slept (passed out) on the sofa until 7am. Even worse for our methodical chicken he had lost his IPod. Sensing potential disaster I shovelled some cereals down him, some coffee and paracetmol. After finding his iPod down the back of the sofa I hustled him out to the car.

Arriving at the beech we met up with our instructor, Luke. After filling in some paperwork saying if we drowned it was our fault we donned a wet suit and headed to the beach. After a quick lesion and armed without 8ft boards we hit the sea. After some practice getting on the board and lying flat we were onto lesion two. Kneeling up. This passed successfully and lesion three was standing. By the end of the hour and a half we had both ridden a wave standing up. Not quite the 15 ft. ones further out but more the white water post wave break. As our lesson was over Luke headed out to play with the big boys leaving us to prefect our skills. An hour and a half later we were both riding small waves into shore. OH MY GOD what fun. I love surfing. Love love love it. If I don’t get a job in NZ I will become a beach bum and surf all day.

After a quick shower we boarded a whale watching boat. On the way out to the deep sea we spotted a seal and before long we were hunting whales. The sea was a little choppy and our whale decided to go to our left meaning the waves hit us from the side shaking us about. I pretended to surf (yes I am a big kid) chicken held on for dear life and worried about sinking and James became sea sick and spent the rest of the 2 hours being sick, feeling sick, lying down or hanging over the edge of the boat. So whilst James was otherwise indisposed the whale watching began. Whales are not frightened of us and for some reason like to perform. Our whale was black and huge and did all sorts of tricks, jumping through the air, flapping his tail, surfacing and blowing water up in the air and generally showing off. Watching this was spectacular but capturing it on camera rather difficult. With some perseverance and a lot of shots of spaced water we eventually got that covered picture of the whale jumping through the air. James on the other hand missed it all, rained the free sea sick tablets and generally prayed for the whale to bog off and for our boat to return to port.

On the way back to port we asked the staff if there were sharks in the water. We had studiously avoided asking this question as we had been in the water but with our water time passed we plucked up the courage. The answer was somewhat alarming. There are approximately 15 varieties of shark in the local waters three of which (the great white, bull and tiger) will attack humans. Chicken went white at the thought and I become even more practical and logical than usual. Well the other surfers are father out to sea and they will attack them first and what are the chance of a shark attack happening. The response (again unwelcome) was oh 6 months ago my friend was attacked and lost an arm. Check it out on Google. OMH like OMG