Surfing's fun!

Surfing is so fun! It is also quite exhausting. Rob and I went on a two-day surf camp over the Labour Day long weekend to learn how to surf at Lancelin with Learn to Surf. You pay $95 per day and food, accommodation at a beach house and lessons are provided. You can choose from a one day lesson (includes lunch) up to five-days camp. Let me tell you - two days were more than enough. Even after the first day, I didn't know if I had enough energy to go another day!

We had to be in Perth at the Wellington bus station by 6:20am for our ride up to Lancelin. The drive takes about 1.5 hours (if you don't speed). The beach house accommodates for about 20 people, and they have an 'open fridge' policy where you can snack on what's available whenever you want. Mainly healthy food like fruits, cereal and bread but there are biscuits and soft drinks for those who wants to junk. The daily schedule is as follows:

8am: the coach from Perth arrives at Lancelin - quick orientation of the beach house and rules, filling out paperwork and suiting up with wetsuits and sunscreen. A half hour whiteboard lesson is given for first timers, more experienced ones head out to beach. Practice surfing in the water for three hours.
11:30am: head back to beach house for a quick lunch, which is usually a salad roll with the option of adding ham and salami. You will get a nice big muffin from Brumby's too (we had yummy blueberry muffin the first day, and the double choc chip muffin on the second day)
12:00pm: Head back out to the water for more surfing (or trying to surf)
13:00pm: Head back to beach house and those returning to Perth get priority of showers
14:00pm: Those returning to Perth jumps on coach, the remaining staying behind have the afternoon free to do what they want to. At this stage, you're so knackered that all you probably want to do is chill out, take a shower, have a nap, watch a dvd, read, play pool, chat - anything but going back out to the beach. This is a great time to get to know your fellow housemates.
18:00-18:30pm: dinner (we had tacos)

You learn the basics on the first day - all the safety stuff, surfing etiquette and how to catch a wave with a big surfboard. We stuck to the whitewater waves (i.e. waves already broken) since we are only wee beginners. Catching the wave is easy enough - the tough part is standing up on the board to ride the wave you've caught without falling off prematurely. On the second day, you practise a bit more on standing up on the board and you also get the chance to "paddle out the back" to catch unbroken waves into the shore. Here you have to be prepared to be dunked many times, something Rob found to be fun.

It is so exhausting - you're in the water for 4 hours each day, dragging the board out, paddling to catch the wave, standing up on (and falling off from) the board, then doing it all over again. I highly recommend doing this if you wanna learn surfing, but honestly, I wouldn't do more than two days consecutive of this stuff. It's really fun, but you really need a break in between from the sun and board-dragging.

We had such great fun getting to know the other campers, most of whom are from overseas: two girls from Finland - one doing a semester of her studies in Murdoch, the other working as an au-pere; a German-Swiss girl travelling for 6mths; a playwright from India who's in Perth for a couple of weeks to co-write a play; a guy from Newcastle (England?) and another from London. It was really interesting talking to these people - the wealth of information from different parts of the world just feeds my desire to go out there and experience it all. One of the Finnish girls have eaten beaver meat. We got two of the girls to try Vegemite - an experience that I'm certain they don't want to revisit ;P

Away from the light pollution of the city area, the stars were beautiful. When it was dark, we took a walk to the beach and just laid on the sand staring up at the Milky Way to the background sound of waves breaking on the shore. Just wonderful :)

I need a couple days' worth of rest to recover from the exhaustion, sunburn and bruises - unfortunately it's back to the daily grind of work for me. Sigh.. I can't believe how much muscle ache I have! It's all good though :)