One thing that some people do first before visiting anything else in Australia is to check out the beaches and go for some surfing. Mostly some long-haired, skinny, slightly tanned guys. I never thought of me as a water person and surfing wasn't high in my bucket list. But nevertheless I booked a two-hour-surf lesson with the Surf School at Scarborough Beach in Perth for Maria, Erin, Kyuwon and me. HURRAY! Let the adventure begin. Of course, quite early in the morning... REALLY?
At 8:30am I picked all three up and we made our silent way to the 30-minute-drive-away beach. Neither of us had EVER surfed before and because of the very cloudy day (with forecasted rain later on) we were not really in an adventurous mood until we arrived at the truck of the Surf School. We were quite early and chatted along, some more people joined in and we all waited together. We had been booked into the later course, as there is an earlier lesson starting at 7:30am (NO WAY!).
Finally it was our turn to sign off some paperwork (I totally read all of that about nobody takes responsibility for any damage that might happen to me...) and then we got into the wetsuits. We were handed surfboards and trotted down to the beach. As First-Timers we had yellow shirts (totally cool(ish)) and got some more information about surf safety, how to deal with drafts, what dangers we have to expect (shallow water, the board itself, other surfers, sharks... WHAT? SHARKS???) and then our coach went through the four steps of standing up on the board. Looks easy enough and in the dry it works quite well. OK, let's go into the water. Thanks to the new and quite thick wetsuits it was absolutely not cold at all. JIPPIE!
The first challenge was to get to the sand bank about 30-40 meters or so off the beach. It was quite a workout to drag the board along with you while fighting arriving waves, not get tangled in your legrope and finally position yourself to wait for the perfect wave.
Yeah, how hard can it be??? Seriously, it was right down damn hard! Holding the board in position, jump on the board in time for the next wave, paddle and get up in four easy steps at the right moment... There were so many people who lost their board into every single direction as soon as a bigger wave hit them, washed off the board while paddling, getting rolled over and hit by the board, washed onshore and drinking all that nice seawater all the way. It was really scary to watch.
Erin managed to stand up for a few seconds quite early on and this really motivated me. I was determined to stand on that board for two whole seconds. Oh dear, I wish I could tell you after over an hour in the water I managed but the maximum was half a second. IF I managed to get onto both feet I got off the board as soon as I let go of it. Maria told me it was the same for her. Fighting your way back to the starting point was so exhausting and some really high waves hit me so hard that I couldn't hang onto the board and it would drag me after it. I got tangled into the legrope quite a few times and the board hit me on my arms. Luckily never on my head but that didn't apply to everybody. I was seriously concerned about Kyuwon who got hit by her board at the very beginning a few times. To be honest, when one of the coaches shouted "Last wave and then out!" I was fairly relieved. We rinsed off the boards, walked back to the truck, took these pictures with Erin's camera and then got changed.
All four of us were seriously exhausted and glad to be back in our clothes again. We ate some fish 'n' chips or pita rolls at a nearby shop and then drove back to Manning. But first we had some Iced VoVo (apparently typical Australian).
When I arrived back in the house at 1pm I deserved that nap. In the evening I went for a walk and then I had some beer, of course, while I skyped with Markus.
Sorry about the lack of pictures. Because of the chance of rain and as it was about being in the water most of the time I didn't bring my camera along. It was certainly fun, especially having friends along with you who suck at this as much as me ;-)
Yours "surfing" Stefanie
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Have your say now! Would you do the same thing or would you do it differently? Do you have any travel tipps for me for my onwards travels? let me know!