As I type this, my hands are blistered and sore, my body bruised and my hair full of sand... but damnit I've had a bloody great few days since I last updated the blog!
The surf-venture was a great laugh... several of us in the hostel went out under the dutiful tuition of County-Down-man-turned-Corralejo-surf-dude James. The gang usually had myself, German guy called Timo, Manchester ex-kickboxer Laura, and the undeniably Italian Fiderico.
I decided one day wasn't going to be enough, so I went for the 3 day surf-school package at 120 euro. We usually ended up touring to the "remote" western part of the island (a whole 15 mins drive!), to the Moher-esque cliffs of "The Step" beach (named as such because of the 200 or so precarious steps you need to take to get down).
Cowabunga!
Each day I progressively got a little bit better (but still wiping out incessently) until yesterday, the 3rd day, when I finally (albeit briefly) stood up for 2 seconds.... woohoo!
What made the surfing all the more interesting was the people I met and the apres-surf events... like the huge spare-rib BBQ in town after the first night, then the beach BBQ (complete with shisha pipe) as the sunset and
Amsterdam surf stylee
the full moon rose up; carressed as we were by the constant warm sea breeze, not to mention the kick-ass rock-gig we went to afterward in Down Under where the Speakafreaks had everyone moshing to excellent covers of "Killing in the Name Of" and "Song 2"... bliss!
I've met a 41 year old italian guy, Georgio, who's been travelling non-stop since he was 16 after selling a house he inherited; got chatting with a PRO kite-surfer called "Gunner" who's been teaching me a lot more about landboarding (his specialist area)... not to mention the countless surf-chicks all over the place, who make it all seem like a swimsuit model's convention.
On the third day we had a pro photographer, Tom, down on the beach with us. He was there to take shots of the surf-school for their new website... and of course we had an entourage of surf chicks brought along with us to make the shoots more "interesting"
Surf gang!
We even got a free tour around the volcanic landscape after the surf-lesson cuz Tom wanted to get a few action shots of the surf-jeeps kicking up dust... was a damn cool day.
To be honest, the past few days have been so action packed that I couldn't believe it when I found out it was only the 14th .. it felt like 6 days had past easily... I still have another 4 days left! Fantastic!
I'm totally Sangria-ed out at this stage so I'm gonna take it easy with the alco in the last few days and mainly just get some last minute tan-work.
I want to try a kite-surf lesson tomorrow also just to see how easy\hard it will be for me to figure out after my many years of landboarding... I've been hanging out with the kitesurf instructors too and they reckon I should be able to pick it up in an hour!
All in all... I'm well impressed with Feurte... and with 40 euro flights down from Dublin via Ryanair, I'm definately gonna make this a frequent stop-off point for long-weekends throughout the year.