surfear

As I walked out into the street 7:00 this morning, beneath thick cloud cover and dressed in three layers, I thought, this is a less than optimal day for surfing.

I was off to Maintecello, a city an hour and a half north of Viña del Mar, for my first surfing experience. I went solo to join up with a group at Casa Central, with two Mexicans, a Spaniard, two germans, a french girl, and two gringas, from two universities. How diverse we were. An hour and a half later, by SUV and Volkswagon bus (yes!) we made it. and it was... cold. Before we even got into our wetsuits, I was shivering, in three layers, including a fleece jacket. No way was I going in that water. 1- minutes later I gave in and donned my wetsuit, for the second time in my life, and was miraculously warmer. Next we... ran. On the beach, accompanied by the street dogs of Maintecello, to warm up. During the stretching exercises, one of the instructors told me to stretch and I told him I was. Turns out I am the most inflexible person he has ever seen.

If you are cold while dry, getting wet is not the best idea. My toes were white and unusable; when I tried to walk I could only balance on my heels. Into the water we ran, through the first set of waves. It was apparent from the beginning that I was the runt student. I couldn't even paddle without falling off of my board, yes really. I found it to be significantly harder than using a rescue board, which in comparison is massive, and much easier to balance. Even when an instructor pushed my board with precision timing I still managed to mess it up every time. Once I fell into a wave, I could not recover fast enough and proceeded to be pummeled by 8 more before there was a lull and I could breath. And I mean sufficiently pummeled, rolled underwater again and again. When I popped up, another one was right there. It was great fun, but eventually I had sharp pains just about everywhere from hitting the board, or from the force of the wave smashing onto my head. I averted this by protecting my head with my arms and diving headlong into the ones I could not attempt to surf.

I did not manage to actually surf, like on top of a wave, standing up. But I learned how it works, I just can't climb onto the board fast enough. I did get on top of the board lots of times though, just not entirely standing up. Nevertheless, it was a fabulous experience. I will repeat it when it is a bit warmer, not the water but at least the air temperature. When asked after lunch if we wanted to go out again, we all were like nooooo, we wanna go home we have been out of the water for two hours and are still freezing. It was overall a fun day, but I am probably going to develop pneumonia.