Weblog 25.9. – 1.10. Learning to surf

The last week in short: pain, cold, scarcity, will power, back to the roots and a lot of fun

But let’s start from the beginning. Monday morning Mikkel and I headed out to start our surfing trip up to Byron Bay. On the bus we discovered that we were 9 blokes (guys for the non Australian readers) and one couple. The tour guide never admitted it, but I think they did that on purpose to keep us focused on the surfing. And indeed we did. On the first day we drove 5 hours to a beautiful camping ground right at the ocean with hardly any tourists. So we had the ocean all to ourselves. Unfortunately the weather was terrible, so we spend our first hours in the water freezing with our summer wet suits. At the end I could not even feel my toes. The next few days went pretty much in the same manner: Surfing all day, sitting next to the fire for hours and then sleeping in a tent and getting up at around six to catch the good waves. No electricity, no girls, no hot showers and nothing to do but surf… The beginning was very hard with every inch of the body aching and I started shouting at the waves every time I got smashed by one and had to get back out there.

Is that all you got?! Come on! You want a piece of me? Come and get it!
I was feeling a bit like Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump when they are in this gigantic storm.
By the end of the trip most of our mates thought I was crazy, but it`s all worth it for that one wave you catch that takes you right to the beach. It`s the best!

These are the kind of trips were you grow together as a group, so we made friends with all our tour mates from Brazil, Ireland, England and Australians.

At the end of the trip we arrived in Byron Bay. Byron is a laid back tourist town with no worries and party on seven days a week. One night I lost everybody else and was walking on the street when I passed that street musician. As he had just finished a song I asked him to play “last plane out of Sydney” and started singing with him. It was so great when random people passing by just joined in and we were all singing the unofficial Australian national anthem. Later in the night Mikkel and I went back for a glorious performance of “brown eyed girl”. The crowd would have gone crazy if there had been one….