Bali the Eighth: Most People Are Surfing Now

Originally the plan for the trip was to SCUBA for the first half and then have sort of a recovery and relaxation time during the second half. That got scuttled when I learned that Bali is a major surfing destination, and that inexpensive classes (in English) were available. It's been on my list to try and opportunities are not entirely common. Ana was the driving force behind getting SCUBA certified, which I was initially ambivalent about, but I dragged her into surfing. I think I had more fun doing her activity than vice versa.

Don't I look like I'm having fun?

The surf is up pretty much every day at the beach in Kuta, so all the classes are located there. Ana selected Bali Learn to Surf based on the fact that they at least claimed to be insured and were located within the Hard Rock Hotel so they probably weren't too sketchy. Also, they would pick us up and drop us off at our hotel for no extra fee.

The first morning they were supposed to pick us up we had a scheduling miscommunication, so instead of spreading classes out over three days, we did two classes the second day and one class on the third, which worked out fine and gave us another day to recover from Mt. Agung before trying to make surf.

The second day the scheduling worked out and they brought us to the surf school. One interesting item of note is that the vehicles going in to the Hard Rock were searched by men carrying assault rifles, and the undersides were examined with mirrors for bombs. All the big hotels and even some of the stores had that level of security, but it seemed mostly for show to us.

At the school they issued us surfboards that had a softish foam coating on the outside, so that if you hit yourself on the head with it (or rather, allowed a giant wave to hit you on the head with it) you just felt pain rather than the sensation of having your brain smooshed. We also got board shirts for the prevention of chafing and sunburn, which worked pretty well though mine was a little small for me. The first day of classes they also had uber-waterproof-sunscreen which they were out of the second day - empircal results suggest that the uber-sunscreen worked a lot better.

Ana really likes this picture for some reason.

The first lesson was in the Hard Rock Hotel's pool, which was probably the nicest pool setup I have ever seen. The pool had a sand bottom over a lot of it which felt so nice on the feet, and the whole thing was surrounded by bungalows and waterfalls. The beach across the street costs a lot less to access though (nothing) - why fly to the Pacific Ocean to use the pool? They had us paddle around and get a bit of a feel for the balance, then had us practice getting upright.

I managed to subdue this smaller one, and keep wave, board, and body in the correct order.

Afterwards, they took us down to the ocean and we pretty much just had at it from there. There were several instructors and they sort of milled around helping the people who weren't doing as well. Mostly they told us to paddle faster when the waves were coming, which I surely would do except I generally was already paddling as fast as I could. Anyhow, the whole thing seemed to make basic sense to me, so after a certain amount of trial and error I could catch and stay with the smaller waves, and even steer with moderate success. I think developing real expertise would take significant practice. I got cocky at a few points and tried to catch some moderate to large size waves and was pretty much eaten alive and spit out. I recommend letting the big ones pass you by if it is your first or second day. Aside from those the biggest hazards were probably the other beginning surfers, as I got hit several times and began to wonder mildly if they were aiming for me. I was definitely among the stronger of the beginning surfers according to Ana.

That one in the back is too big.

Ana did not have so much luck with the surfing. By the end of the three classes she had managed to catch and ride several waves (we even have photographic proof of this) but spent the majority of the time falling off sideways, backwards, frontwards, etc. She told me early that surfing wasn't nearly as unbearable as she expected so we're going to go with that as her opinion in general. I liked it somewhat more than that, but between SCUBA and surfing we'll probably do more SCUBA in the future. The school has photographers associated with it who sit on the beach with really nice cameras with really strong zoom, so we have bunches of high quality pictures of low quality surfing in the gallery. We had one additional large item of drama associated with surfing, which I will address in the next post.

This happened somewhat more often...

...than this.