October 29, 2010

Finished surf camp, but haven’t finished telling about Byron yet. The day after the dive I went on a day trip to Nimbin. Nimbin is like a hippy town that held some Woodstock-type festival years back. Stoners and hippy stuff everywhere and where people go to get pot. The town was really really small; one street maybe 2 street blocks in length, not that great. The graffiti everywhere was cool and the museum was trippy and kind of cool looking, but it was mostly shops of incense and hippy gear. I went with some girls that were in my room at the hostel and we all went in on some pot cookies. We got four cookies for $20. I took it at like 4pm and didn’t feel it until like 8pm after the girls checked out and I was alone in my room. Pretty sure that was my first time actually being high and I didn’t like it. I think I took too much and maybe that’s why. You’re meant to take only a half of a cookie, but after the first hour when I felt nothing I took another quarter. Thinking that may of tipped me over the edge. The next day was the horse riding. That whole thing sounded really romantic, but because I hadn’t been on a horse in years the guide put my horse on a leash and he kept running into her horse so I was focusing the entire time on keeping them apart instead of how pretty the beach was. We also got to take the horses into the water, which was pretty cool. Being bareback on a horse in the water is a little slippery and off balance. It was really cool though. “Horse Surfing” is what they call it. Horses were clearly miserable, but I pet Stryder heaps and thanked him for being so nice to me haha.

Alright, for the surf camp… this is going to be hard to write. So much happened and have so many fun stories that I don’t know how to condense it to anything readable. I’ll give it a go... They asked if I wanted to come in a night earlier because I was the only person booked onto my trip. I was meant to be going from Byron Bay to Sydney (south) on a bus, stopping at a few places along the way and checking out different beaches. Turns out that they were going to take me straight to the base camp in Pacific Palms and I was going to just hang there for 5 days. Totally not a problem, but I didn’t know that because no one told me so, when I get to the bus at 6pm on Friday night (instead of Sat morning like it was meant to be), we had to drive 7hrs to get to camp. There were 3 workers and 4 guys on the bus. We got there at like 2am and it’s a proper summer camp set up. There’s a main building with bar, lounge, tables, DJ booth, and a pool. Then there are a couple cabins around the property (which is a farm with horses and stuff) with bunks. The next morning my trip started and I had to tag along with a bus full of some grade school footy team. Me and like fifteen 14-year olds all day learning to surf... awesome. They were only in for the weekend though. First lesson went alright. The instructor for the whole week Ecko, and his helper for the weekend was Shane. Both wicked cool guys. Both are really chill and laid back. Eck is a typical surfer guy: a fun 26-year old drunk, super cool. Shane is chill, I think a littler older and was super awesome with me. Since I was the only person of a decent age and the only girl, he sort of kept me company all weekend. The camp has a million beaches within a 30min drive, at least 5 that I saw so each day we went to a different one. Day one was Boomerang beach. The kids are all so tiny and light that they stood up instantly and have no fear so they were leaping into big waves without any hesitation. I, on the other hand, was terrified of every wave and it took me all day of falling to stand up on a wave. By the end of the first day Shane had me standing and I actually semi-rode one wave to shore. By “wave” I mean that super small broken wave at shore. My knees and elbows were torn up from falling in the sand on shore, but I was so happy to have stood up that I didn’t care. That night one of the helpers that was sleeping in my room got sick and threw up all over the floor next to his bed. Instead of getting up and going to the bathroom, he just continued to throw up for like 1.5hrs all over. I had to sleep with a blanket over my face to avoid the smell. The next morning he was so embarrassed and the rest of the staff thought it was hysterical. We kind of joked about it the rest of the week. The next morning, Sunday, we went to Seals Rocks but the surf there pretty much sucked. The weather was a bit cloudy and overcast but the waves were nonexistent so we played a few games in the water and then wandered the beach for a bit finding big rocks to jump off. Eck was super energetic with the kids so they were running around playing while Shane and I stayed back and slowly walked and chatted. We saw heaps of dolphins and 2-3 humpback whales in the distance. They were pretty far out there so I couldn’t really tell that they were whales until he pointed out the blow hole. The weather didn’t really improve, so we had lunch and went back to camp because the kids needed to leave camp by 2. That was it for surfing for me that day. The entire camp was gone so it was just myself and the staff at camp. I felt so bad because they kept insisting on cooking for me and always felt obligated to get me things and check that I was okay. I told them if they gave me two pieces of bread I’d make PB&J for dinner. It was still pretty rainy so we all just sat around all afternoon watching Friends. We got out blankets and snacks and just sat around from like 2 to 10 watching 2.5 discs of Friends. Kind of a perfect afternoon actually. Eck kept talking about that all week and how awesome that was. At the end of the trip he said he'd never forget our Friends Bender. How adorable. The next morning they insisted on making me eggs. Awesome eggs, but still unnecessary. I had a private lesson at Bulls Paddock with Eck. He and I and a few other staff went out for the morning. He gave me some tips on shore and went out in the water and helped me out a bit there. I felt bad that he couldn’t surf because he had to help this one person, so I went back to shore to practice standing and let him play around. I couldn’t seem to get my footing right to stand, so that was frustrating me. I felt that I was doing a lot better though. I went back out, almost stood up a few times and we went back to camp for lunch. A new group got in for the afternoon lesson. This was their first day, 10ish people that were my age, so we went back to the same beach and I got to basically start over with my lesson. Shane was done after the weekend, so a new instructor, Mark, was going to be with us for the rest of the trip. He was super cool too; younger and semi new to the camp. Weather was awesome so we played around all afternoon in the water and attempting to surf. I gave up kind of on trying really hard because it wasn’t really working out for me and I was getting frustrated, which made it less fun. That night at dinner Entourage was somehow brought up with Mark and he got so excited that I had season 7 so he insisted that we watch it straight away. Watched half the season that night. Next day (day 4) we went to Lighthouse beach, which was incredible! Beautiful blue water and a really cool bush walk. The waves in the AM were kind of huge so I opted out of fighting with those considering I couldn’t even stand in small waves. Tanned with the girls all morning. In the afternoon when the waves calmed down Mark, Kirsty, and I went on the bush walk before surfing. The walk was kind of crazy. Some of it was along a little cliff. It was really narrow and I had to hold onto plants to climb up. Eventually when we got to flat land we wandered out to the point. It was a big chunk of land that separated two beaches so we got to see another beach on the other side and the lighthouse from our beach. The water was incredible and there were some cliffs and beautifulness. Played in the water for a bit more, attempted to surf a bit more, then went back to the camp to get wasted haha. All afternoon Eck was saying that we needed to get super drunk! We played a few games of flippy cup, one round involving costumes, so the party turned into a crazy drunken costume party. Boys started getting naked and everyone started dancing around everywhere. Such a great time. I drunkenly wandered back to my room to go to sleep but found Mark drunkenly watching Entourage (without me!!) so we watched the rest of the season and went to bed. Next day was my last day for surfing. I was meant to leave that evening for Sydney, but they asked if I could stay an extra night and leave in the morning. Again, I’m the only person that needs to get to Syd because these 10 people are all heading north, not south. I was just going to Syd (for the third time) to hang at Jackie’s so I didn’t mind hanging out for another night. That meant another night hanging with the new awesome people I've met! So the fifth day of surfing was back at Boomerang beach and was pretty chill. Little bit of surfing, little bit of tanning, some volleyball, and photos. Went back for my last night of getting drunk with the clan. Everyone knows I’m not usually a huge fan of drinking, but I was so stoked to drink with these people. They were all so much fun and everyone was so open to making fools of themselves dancing and wearing costumes that it was a guaranteed good night. So, we play an intense game of scavenger-hunt musical chairs in which I came in second place. We had to undress people, go find condoms, and my last mission was to “properly” put on a wetsuit. I had to run out to the shed, strip, get on a wetsuit, and run back. I slipped on the floor and fell on the way out there, an the other girl didn’t get undressed when she put on her wetsuit. I say that she didn’t “properly” put it on, so she lost in my eyes, but whatever. My body so bad hurt from that fall and I have heaps of bruises from that… and even more from being smacked by a board all week. I really wanted to go cow tipping, but we learned it was impossible, so Mark, Kirsty, Sam and I opted for a creepy walk in the middle of nowhere. We were drunk and creeped out but had such a fun walk. The boys got naked and started running around the field. We got scared of posts we could vaguely see in the distance thinking they were animals or people coming to kill us. Got back, danced a bit more, and went to bed. Next morning everyone got all packed up and left. I was so sad to see them go. I’m terribly jealous that they all get to spend another 2 nights together and I had to leave. Eck said he wished I could have stayed longer with them and that I became part of their little family. I loved hearing that. I was trying to find a way to stay… brainstorming jobs for me so I could stay and get paid. Couldn’t come up with anything. I’d kill to manage that place because it wasn’t really run that great, but don’t see that happening haha. Probably the best week in Oz. Eck played the same song over and over again on the bus, so I’ve been listening to it, and I’ll always remember surf camp if I hear it. It’s Split Enz – 6 Months on a Leaky Boat. I loved having Eck as our alarm clock every morning waking up a room full of hung over people. He was always so energetic even after a crazy drunken night. He’d get just as smashed as everyone else and still manage to be up early with a huge smile on his face. He’s great at his job! I just love love love seeing pictures of the beaches we were at knowing that I was taught how to surf at these incredible beaches. I am quite lucky. Couldn’t have asked for a better week… well, maybe I’d ask that I could actually ride a few waves haha! That’s long enough. I have more stories from the week, but I guess these are the highlights for ya.