Post 11: South Africa, mouth smackin' ya's

SO Im still doing this thing, even though it has been a while....
I'm in plettenburg bay as of yesterday afternoon, about an 7 hour drive from Cape Town (CT). In CT we had a homestay with a couple named Sean and Lucinda. Lucinda is a US transplant from florida who marriend sean, who is south african. They were both in their 30s and 40s a very nice people, buttheir house was in a very quiet little subburb of CT called Kommetjie. There wasn't much around their house (other than the beach) so it was a bit of a mission to find a computer and as such i haven't been posting. So sorry to all who were waiting for another post, the backpackers hostel in Plet has computers so that should make me a little more actice on here.

For those who don't know I am doing an orgainized trip up the coast of South Africa with a brittish company called Ticket To Ride.
Our group consists of 13 riders and 2 trip leaders. We have one Scottish leader, nikki, and one South African Leader, Bevin.
Of the 13 of us, 12 are brittish (Johnny, Johnty, francis, Camera Steve, Steve the pirate, Jack, Toby, Alex, Pete, Chris, and Katherine) , and 1 is a girl, but all seem to be good people who have stayed fairly enthusiastic about being here together.

In CT we surfed mainly a beach called Muizenburg, which has super mellow waves, awesome for longboarding. It is also in the same bay as Seal Island, which is a huge breeding ground for white sharks, and also the place where they film massive white sharks jumping out of the water to eat seals. But alas we never saw any sharks, even when we out of the water so all limbs are still intact. It is whale season however so we did manage to see over 10 whales, and whle we were surfing a pod of Dolphins and sometimes the occasional seal would come surf with us and jump around us while we sat in the lineup, waiting to catch a wave, pretty amazing.
On the last day in CT a new swell arrived so we tried to surf some new spots, but ended up back at muizenburg and a fierce onshore wind. Oh well. That evening, steve the pirate and I decided to try and paddle out at longbeach around sunset. The waves there were at least a few feet overhead (taller than me standing up), and although i made it out to the lineup I never caught a wave, so that was a little disappointing, but it seemed to impress my instructors and eveyone else that i even made it out to the lineup with the waves so big.

One of the most fun things we did in CT was to play soccer on the beach, and in the street, with Thomas a 28 year old soccer coach, and a few of his students from the township of Masipumhelele. A township in SA is pretty much exactly like the shantytowns where the aliens in the movie Distric 9 live. As thomas explained it to me the townships are both orgainized by the SA govt. and set up unofficially by the hoards of people who move from the country, where they lived off the land but made no money, to the city where they hope to make more money. Their quality of living is pretty poor, and they are pretty much stuck in a shitty situation, surrounded by corruption, uneducated, and unable to find a way out of the townships, but the kids were all really friendly and seemed happy. And Thomas, whose passion in life seems to be soccer seems to serve a much more important role in his community than just a coach: He is about the only person providing activities after the kids get out of school, and keeping them busy keeps them out of trouble, becasue drugs run rampant in all the townships of SA.

Plet is a much smaller place. We stay in the center of town, we will get to do a 215 meter bungee jump (the highest bridge jump in the world. Yesterday we surfed once, immediatly upon our arrival, and now we have 2 days off due to strong onshore winds (which sucks ass). So today we start training for our lifeguard and Instructor Certifications, which means running and paddling. Should be less fun than surfing. But it is a beautiful morning so i am gonna leave it at this for now, and go eat some breakfast.

TTFN

Post 10: Continuation of Post 9

So i tried to do this yesterday. And spent around an hour writing on my phone befroe I pushed the Back Button and, poof, all my writing was gone. But i wanted to write a bit more about Helsinki since I am not so tired anymore. So i will start with another list of key words, followed by a list of key phrases i learned in both finnish and swedish.

Keywords (to accopany above list):
Illegal student Party Place
Karaoke
Dance Dance Revolution
Theater Tour
Black Licorice (yuck)
Tar Liqour


Key Phrases:

Hello=Moi (finnish)
Thank you=kiitos(finnish)
Fuck=Vittu(finnish)
Excuse me Sir, your reindeer shit in my purse= Ursakta, din ren sket I min handvaska (swedish, and some of the letters have two dots above them, idk how to do that on the computer)
And in finnish: Anteeksi, porosi paskoi kasilaukkuuni

I'll add here that I loved trying to read the finnish street signs. They have named may thinks words with a sieres of 3 or 4 k's followed by the same number of U's and T's and i guess its just easy for them but the words don't even look real to me.

So onto the story:

Even though i stayed out late almost every night I actually managed to eat quite a healthy diet in Helsinki, but never better than at Annina's family summer house in espoo(?) out there her parents Christian and Ulla have a beautiful garden from which we ate carrots, potatoes and greanbeans. and they have plum and apple trees (which weren't quite ripe yet but still found some tasty plums) and bushes with berries which they made into some kind of delicious drink by boiling the berries, and stored in their "cellar" which looks like a hobbit home.
The best meal I had was when Christian smoked a Salmon for Me and Annina and Tabby (Annina's friend from Australia who also happened to be staying with Annina for a few days).

First he salted the fish fairly heavily and then but it in a box with a few different kinds of leaves and sticks, their scent was to cook into the fish. the end product was on of the most juicy and delicious pieces of fish I have ever eaten, Christian siad that the trick is to not get the fire so hot so the fish doesn't dry up.

It was actually very touching to have Christan prepare one of his favorite meals for us becasue he hasn't been able to eat, or taste a thing since he bagn chemo treatment in June. The treatmeants have finished but he must give his throat, right where ke held his cell phone, a chance to heal becasue the chemo pasically made a jumbled mess out of his throat.
He had to take his meals by filling a plastic bottle with some liquid mixture that looked like baby food which connected to a small plastic hose that ran through his belly and into his stomach directly. Can you imagine 3 months of that?!

And what was worse he couldn't speak for months before i arrived. But he had just regained the use of his voice a few days before I got there, which was very nice becasue he told me interesting stories while we sat in the sauna together.

One story that Annina told me which actually managed to shed some humorous light on the situation was that since her father had regained his voice, any time that Ulla spoke with him he would complain that his voice hurt and he couldn't speak, but when the Cat would get outside for more than an hour or two Christian would go out and call loudly for her. Which I heard him do as well. I think it is a sign that he is recovering well, he tooke me out on the boat once and also drove in and out of helsinki a few times while I was there. Hopefully the treatment worked.

Ok that is enuff computer time for today.

TTFN

post 9

Date: 9/12
Location: amsterdam.

Key words:
Traditional finnish culture
Swedish theater in helsinki
French cinema in swedish and finnish
Sweet island with war tunnels
Finnish rock
Boat bar
Invisible pizza shops
Spaghetti with tuna sauce
Traditional (means naked) finnish sauna with christian
Homemade juice
Garden
Finnish arthouse cinema.



Story:
As you can see I did many things in finland. Now I am In amsterdam. I got two hours sleep last night plus another 1 or 2 at the airport/on the plane. Been in amsterdam long enough to try smoking pot for the first time. Always wondered what it was like but its illegal in the states so obviously I never tried it. Its an exciting and exhausting feeling all rolled up into one smooth smoking sweet smelling little piece of paper.

I'm going to take a nap or full snooze now. Not sure which.
I have lots of pictures so far good for the blog and facebook (OMG!!!)
TTFN

post 8: cornwall

Date: 9/5/09
Location: car and train in the english countryside

I've decided to make things easy on myself because my fat fingers struggle on these tiny keys. So I will be listing things that sum up our semi-week in polzeath, a summer town on the atlantic coast in cornwall, followed by one short story from the trip.

Keywords:
English countryside
Stonehenge
Iconic airliner trailer
Hurricane swell
Rainstorm
Laser tag
Cornish pastie
Mega shark vs giant octopus
Onshore winds

Key people:
Me
Christian
Ed
George
Octavia
Skatie

Supporting people:
Mark and erin

Story:
Late august in cornwall felt like a crappy day in october in chicago, only greener. Our first full day in the trailer was the only day of favorable winds for surfing. Light offshore/sideshore wind all day. The waves seemed to build a little as the day went on. We surfed from around 830 to 1030am and went in to eat and i got one wonderful overhead wave.   Around noon the rain really picked up and all we could think about was how miserable it would be to get into our wet cold wetsuits. I was laying on a bed undercovers in the van when everyone made the push to get suited up.  And reluctantly i got suited up  

So we got our suits on and made the 3 min walk from the trailer park, across the street, to the beach. After my suit was on all my complaints were over and I was just excited to surf.

The paddle out through the shore was always grueling, on this particular session only the boys made it out back, partially because Skatie and Tia were given some safety advice by a surfer coming out of the water so they didn't paddle out where we (ed christian greg and I) did.

When I finally made it through the waves I was pretty exhausted so I just sat on my board and watched the sets come through.  

The waves at polzeath are a beach break with about 3 or 4 decent peaks out back when it was big.  The waves we rode were gifts sent to us from hurricane bill. The biggest swells were measured at around 10 feet with an 11 second swell period. The biggest faces we estimated at about 15 feet.  Very powerful.  

After resting my arms and watching a few sets I decided it was time to paddle into some peaks. In my limited surfing experience I would say the biggest waves I surfed before this had faces that were no more than 6 feet tall. So this was a big jump in size and I was nervous to the point that, if I had waited any longer to take a wave, I could have easily talked myself out of it.

My first few waves we a combination of humbling and disappointing. Lots of thrashings and underwater tumbling, lots of near missed drops.   Over the course of the 2.5 hour session the weather switched between a steady rain and a torrential downpour making it difficult to see the incoming set waves, which had a tendency to begin crumbling about 50 yards in front of you meaning you had to be on your toes.  

Finally i got a good peak and good position I was swallowed up by whitewater for a moment on as a got to my feet and as i came down the face.  Afterwards Ed and George said the wave face was 3 times as tall I was, not sure if that is true, but if so it would be a wave a good 8 feet bigger than anything I was used to.  I do know that i was scarred shitless on my feet and just as the water cleared from my eyes I saw some guy with a red board right in my line.   So i jumped off my board before the drop was done and tried to swim under the wave.  I basically tumbled and twisted for a few moments before breaking the surface behind the wave.  I had survived and not done any damage to my board or the man and his board in front of me.  But i did wish that i had continued my ride.  Later in the session the sun managed to peak through the clouds and the rain fell to a drizzle, a very beautiful moment in time that helped relax my nerves a little.

Over the next few days the onshore winds howled making the waves choppy, and the water was churned up with sand and seaweed giving it an nice brown color reminiscent of a big northwest day in the fall or spring at home at cliffs.   I got some great rides, not so fearful as I was when i first made those first few drops, but certainly with a sense of respect for the power of waves that size.

On to Finland to see Annina tomorrow!

TTFN