Surfing attracts jellyfish!

Surfing was… unique. The local surf instructor slightly shredded his leg in an unnamed recent accident, and his girlfriend forbade him to actually teach us how to surf. So he sent Kristi and I on our way with two rented boards and a few confusing, self-contradictory tips on how to skim gracefully over the surface of the waves.

Of course, my surfing consisted less of grace and poise than getting my face flattened by a flying surfboard, but life is a learning experience. My surfboard was comically small, so when I lay on my stomach to paddle out past the breakers, it was a foot underwater rather than resting on the surface. The result was a curious hydrodynamic vortex that powered oceanic quantities of seawater directly up my nose each time I passed a wave. Kristi was rather more successful, acquiring a truly maniacal look in her eyes and declaring that she was abandoning her life of international development work to become a “surfer chick”. It’ll take me a few more tries before such an addiction takes hold. Occasionally I felt a momentary thrill of accomplishment at having skillfully stood up on my board, only to find that it had long since buried itself, motionless in the underwater sand. Eventually I gave up trying to actually surf, and just reverted to yesterday’s game of playing in the titanic waves, albeit with the challenging new handicap of having a 7-foot surfboard ties to my ankle. Good times.

We bartered for seafood with everyone we met on the way back to the lodge while the sun set. We returned with nearly 9 kilograms of scallops, prawns, crayfish and miniscule crabs, which we combined into a nearly inedible paella of burnt rice, unsuccessfully flavoured with salt and cider. This failure drove most of our crew to bed, but I returned religiously to the beach. Tonight the sand on the beach was so smooth that the retreating tide left behind a motionless film of water that mirrored the stars and half-moon above. Wandering the unrippling expanse, staring down at my feet, had the most enrapturing effect, like walking on the sky.