Yeeeeew!

I survived my surfing trip! Yeeeew! (That's what you yell as you ride a wave!)

We had a total of 4 lessons and learned how to ride different types of waves every day. The first day we just focused on riding the white water (a wave as it's crashing/after it crashed) which was the easiest to catch and time standing up on, but was also the most difficult to stay standing on because of the roughness of the water. The next day we learned how to ride green waves (waves that haven't crashed yet) which were more difficult to actually catch, but were a lot smoother and easier to ride once you caught them. They also moved a lot quicker, which was more fun! The last day we learned how to catch a green wave that was starting to peel and to turn to ride it across as it peeled from one side. It was pretty rough out the last day though so it was a challenge to get far enough out in the water to actually catch a wave because you just kept getting pushed back by the crashing waves. Also ended up getting fully smashed by a crashing wave a few times... let's just say I did ingest a lot of salt water this weekend. 

Overall it was a really great trip though! I was fairly successful and although it beats the crap out of your body, I would like to try surfing again sometime! 

All around the camp there were signs recruiting people to stay there and train to be a surf instructor. Most of the instructors seemed to be people who were traveling in Australia attended the surf camp and ended up loving it and staying and training to be instructors. Our guide/main instructor's name was Josh and he was originally from Canada. He was one of the many who loved the place and surfing so much that he decided to stay. 

During the day we pretty much just surfed and hung out on the beach/explored down the beach a little bit. The first picture below is some other surfers coming in from the water as we were walking down the beach a bit and the second is me throwing up my shakas by some sand boards! (We drew sand boards to practice popping up on before we actually got into the water.) As you can probably guess by the clouds behind me in the second picture, we got rained on during our walk back up the beach that day. 

After our days of surfing and hanging out on the beach we got to hang out around the camp and meet a lot of the other people doing their own stays at the surf academy. The first night we got there the group we went with from USC just headed out to the beach and enjoyed the stars. It was amazing, I've never seen so many stars in my life. I guess being in the middle of nowhere on the coast is a good place to be for that!. The next night there was a bon fire and the night after we all headed back out to the beach for a beach party! They had a pretty sweet stereo built into a trash can and tiki torches that were all set up on the beach. 

We saw some pretty cool animals during the trip too! The second day we were surfing and we saw a pretty big turtle swimming a bit further out from us. We saw some crabs, a bunch of hermit crabs, some parrots (it's strange seeing them out in the wild), and Kookaburras! The Kookaburras are very cool looking and get really puffed up, but they also liked to hang around during meals and swoop down and steal food off of people's plates. Even with a full picnic table of people they have no fear and sat on the fence near the tables, scoped the place out, then dropped in and took large pieces of food right off of plates! They also hung out in the trees that were right by our cabin. 

Overall it was an amazing trip! When I get the pictures of me actually surfing I'll be posting those as well!