The Last Paddle-In

Yes, it's time to paddle back in to the beach and out of the water. The sun has set and alas, my time in Puerto Rico has ultimately come to an end. It's strange, after a short vacation or trip I would normally feel like the time just flew by. In fact, the older I've gotten, it seems like time in general just keeps speeding up and speeding up. I remember as a child, when the 2 and 1/2 months of summer vacation from school seemed to last an eternity. But now, months and seasons seem to fly by at the blink of an eye. But my time in Puerto Rico did not feel that way. I think it's because I experienced so many different new things while I was down there and had so much time to ruminate on them as well. And also, it may be like my friend Oded exclaimed while he was out there in the big waves with me: "I feel so alive!". I think at moments like that, time almost grinds to a halt, very much in contrast to the blurring speed of my usual zombie-esque state of everyday life.

Leaving Puerto Rico and coming back to Charleston left me with a few mixed feelings. I really wasn't that sad to be leaving, as I felt as though I had experienced so many wonderful things while I was there, and wanted to return to my normal environment while still filled with those positive vibes. I was also ready to continue on to the next unknown chapter of my life (ie living off the grid as it were, without the security blanket of a 9-5 job which I have been wrapped in for the last 5 years or so).

But last week, when I went out to the local surf break (The Washout) here in Charleston, SC, I definitely found myself missing Puerto Rico a lot!!! It was supposed to be a relatively "good" day out there, but instead I had to put on my wetsuit to face windy, sloppy 1-2 ft conditions that were incredibly underwhelming to say the least. If I were back in Puerto Rico, I would have looked at waves like that, walked away from the beach and found more excitement playing dominoes with the tired old guys. Unbelievably, against my own desires, I have become a wave snob. I'm sure my standards will steadily drop the longer I stay here but it's always a bit hard coming down from that mountain top experience.

Anyways, thanks to all of you out there for reading the blog. I hope some of you are now inspired to come join or visit me on my next surfari, or just go out there and do something that really makes you feel alive.

Peace!

Cabo Rojo and the Southwest Coast

During the last week of my stay in Puerto Rico, my Mom came down from Gainesville to visit me. She was very excited to see all the places and people I had written about in the blog. And on the first couple of days she even came out to watch me surf at Maria's and Wilderness. But after those two days, she figured that she would enjoy herself more just hanging out and swimming around the local beach by the apartment instead of trying to pinpoint me in the lineup at a surfing beach with her binoculars - plus those surfing beaches are extremely unhospitable places to try and take a leisurely swim.

On the last weekend, we went down to the Southwest tip of the island around Cabo Rojo. Before we got there, we made a quick stop in Puerto Real where the annual Fish Festival was in full swing. Lots of people out and about, all locals and we made our way to an authentic fish restaurant where the front of the restaurant faced the street and the back of it was right on the water where its fishing boat was conveniently parked. In the restaurant, the waiter comes out with a big tray loaded with fresh fish and you just point at whichever one you want to eat. Then, about 15 minutes later, that same fish comes back out to your table on plate, deep fried, in its entirety - head, tail, etc... pretty tasty!

After eating, Mom and I drove to the extreme Southwest corner of the island where the landscape changed dramatically from the usual lush jungle/beach/mangrove setting we were used to. Instead, this area looked rather desolate and rugged, accentuated by the salt flats. At land's end, there is a small lighthouse, some precipitous cliffs and a nice quiet beach called "La Playuela" which is excellent for swimming. A nice calm and picturesque setting indeed!


The lighthouse at Cabo Rojo

The cliffs of Cabo Rojo

"La Playuela"

Clash of the Titans

So back in late March my friend Oded came over from Fort Lauderdale to visit me for a few days. We were able to catch a good sized swell while he was here so we did quite a bit of time in the water. But on Wednesday, March 26th, I was delighted to hear that Oded was up for a trip to the big city (San Juan) to watch the big World Cup Qualifier that would played that night.

The game pitted fierce island rivals Puerto Rico against the Dominican Republic in a one game elimination in the long qualifying process for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Now Puerto Rico (ranked 149th in the world) and the Dominican Republic (ranked 178th) have about a snowball's chance of actually making it all the way there. Both countries are hispanic rarities in that baseball is considered their national sport, rather than soccer (which is rightly the national sport in about 95% of the rest of the world).

After spending the day in Old San Juan, cleaning out a casino, sampling free Don Q rum and touring old forts and castles, Oded and I headed over to the stadium at night. Although the quality of the players in the game was far from top class, there was a lot of intensity out there. And the atmosphere in the stands was very good, lots of cheering, singing, trumpet playing, toilet paper throwing, drums, etc to make it a very lively affair.

The game had to go into overtime where Puerto Rico finally scored, securing their right to receive the privilege of surely being thrashed in the next round by Honduras. Definitely had a great time.

Goal Celebration



Game Atmosphere


Top Picture
Standing in awe and reverence outside the National Stadium in Bayamon, the true epicenter of Puerto Rican soccer... reminded me a lot of the Maracana in Rio de Janeiro :)

Gas Chambers & Manglito

So what did mere mortals do during the peak onslaught of the big swell? Well, Jason and I certainly spent many hours watching the big waves from the beach and we also looked for places where the swell was a little more manageable. We found a couple spots in Rincon and Aguadilla where it usually never broke, but during this epic swell all kinds of remote coastal nooks and crannies were lighting up. These spots didn't take the full brunt of the swell since some of them were almost completely blocked from the North/Northeast direction of the swell, or the wrap that did make it to those spots was much tamer. So ironically, during the biggest days of the swell, Jason and I probably surfed the smallest waves, but once the swell started to taper off, we were able to emerge from our ratholes and charge the spots that were previously unrideable.

Some of the coolest (and most photogenic) spots we checked out were Gas Chambers and Manglito next to Crashboat Beach. These two breaks are very similar in that they break very close to shore against rocky cliffs and that they are both very hollow tube-like waves. They are fickle though, meaning they only break on a few occasions each year, when a swell is both big enough and comes from the right direction. The lineups for the waves were extremely crowded, and dominated by boogey boards in a ratio of about 2:1 to surfers. With these kind of waves, it's all about getting barreled, shacked, pitted, tubed (I'm sure there's plenty of other synonyms for the word). And it seems like these waves are more conducive (and less hazardous) to the bodyboarders. Especially considering that there were often rebound waves coming through here: these are waves that had crashed, had hit the rocky shoreline and were now heading back towards the lineup where the surfers were on their waves - quite a few times we saw people on a wave when a rebound wave came in and violently smacked them off of it.

In fact, after watching these waves for a while, I was quite excited about trying my luck at the Wishing Well break close by. It looked a little bit smaller and slightly slower than Gas Chambers and Manglito and at the time I was psyched about surfing anything that looked less than double overhead big.

Now let me explain something about the characteristics of waves, because none of them ever seem to be EXACTLY the same.. but in Puerto Rico, although the waves are quite a bit bigger than your average US East Coast beach break, they tend to be slightly more forgiving. This can be seen in the way most waves in Puerto Rico sort of crumble over, and then peel to one side. This makes the wave easy to get into, and easy to stay on - allowing the surfer time and space to adjust. However, it does require the surfer to paddle harder and push himself into the wave. On the East Coast of the US the wave usually pitches enough to push you in, and then just tumbles over all at once into a close out with very little open face to ride. So back to these barreling waves in Puerto Rico, of which Wishing Wells that I was about to surf is one. They jack up extremely quick, break close to the shore, are extremely glassy and clean and are as fast as greased lightning.

So I drop into my first wave and get wiped out pretty quick. I need to turn down the line as soon as possible I tell myself in preparation for my second attempt. I drop in again but I didn't calculate the angle just right as I am high up on the wave where the lip picks me up off my board and slams me down on the flat glassy water below. Faceplant... hard! It literally felt like getting an extremely forceful open handed slap on the side of my grill.. quite jarring. I shake off the cobwebs, get back in the lineup and try to settle down. "Get the angle right, don't stay too high on the wave" I tell myself. Drop in number 3: I really don't remember what I did that time, but I sure remember the final result.. faceplant! Smacked again. So after that, with my tail between my legs, I paddled out of that situation. I can still remember the awesome view of the glassy tube in front of me, like looking down the barrel of a big gun (and when ridden properly, the surfer looks like a bullet going through it). Cool wave, but it allows no room for error, and I still make a ton of 'em. I can totally see how (good) surfers get all excited about these waves, because it's all adrenalin right from the get go. No moves, no waiting for the wave, just screaming through a tube at top speed like a bat out of hell.


This is what Gas Chambers looks like in between sets... not only do you have to worry about trying to catch this freight train of a wave and trying to emerge unscathed.. but you also gotta look out for the 50 other guys out there trying to do the same thing!


Surfer at Manglito making it look oh so easy, in the right place at the exact right time.


Busy picture? Let's see whats happening here starting from the right: Surfer dropped in too deep and is about to get cleaned out by whitewater. Bodyboarder looks like he has this wave dialed and may actually make it out, while the water-borne photographer is getting ready to snap a great picture.

Revisiting the Big Swell

First off, let me apologize for being a slacker as far as updating the blog. But to be honest, I am frequently surprised at how busy I can get even when I'm unemployed. Checking different spots for waves and surfing them takes up a considerable amount of time! Anyhow, I did want to share some more thoughts about the big swell we had here about 10 days ago now.

It was in the late afternoon of Tuesday, March 18th that the first forerunners of the swell started hitting the island. My friend Jason and I were chomping at the bit to see what kind of waves would be rolling in. So we headed to Maria's in Rincon where we were joined by about 80 of our closest surfing buddies in the water. The conditions were good, offshore wind blowing and the sets were building ranging in size from about 1 ft to 3ft overhead. Now those are some pretty big freakin waves but I had been out in similar conditions once before so that helped relax me a little bit. Another thing which I learned to do is not look backwards at the wave right before it breaks - or let me rephrase - at least you shouldn't think about it rationally as it is swells up behind you. Any rational thought would tell you to freak out, panic or release your bowels. So no, I didn't do any of those, but instead just worked on timing, paddling hard and catching some of these beasts. And when you do catch one, holy cow, what a feeling! The drop, the speed, the bottom turn as you go back up the face of it and the push the wave keeps giving you - awesome!!! I was able to catch about 3 or 4 waves and after my last one, I just rode the whitewater back to the beach. And on the way in, I saw a $5 bill floating in the water which I grabbed - as if to pound into my head with the subtlety of a sledgehammer - this was your lucky day!!!


As bright and inspiring as Tuesday night was, Wednesday morning was dark and gloomy. The true size of the swell had really filled in and its menace was accentuated by the overcast skies. Outside my front yard, huge 25 foot waves were churning, in a pretty chaotic manner looking extremely gnarly and nasty. But sure enough, there were a couple heads bobbing out there by the main break about 150 - 200 yards out. You couldn't have paid me $5000 to go out in that stuff, so I tried to ponder what made these guys go out there? As Jason explained to me, these guys are "chargers". Chargers are surfers who will "charge" any wave they see, regardless of how big and nasty it looks, or whether they have ever surfed the break before. Chargers are inebriated in self confidence of their surfing abilities, desire to conquer new challenges - or as Jason speculated about the guys out in the water this morning "maybe they just smoked too much weed".

So as we were watching this scene, I picked out this head that was bobbing up out of the water every few seconds. Was it a bodyboarder? Or maybe some lunatic who went in there to swim or bodysurf? No way, this guy looked like he was in trouble. Jason and I ran down the beach to keep up with him, not really sure what we could do to help since we couldn't go into the water very far ourselves without getting into the same mess. But we followed him down a few hundred yards to where he finally washed up onto the beach. Like a scene out of a movie, he stumbled onto the beach and collapsed. We dragged him a little farther from the ocean and after about 2 minutes of gasping, he finally told us how his leash snapped and that he was caught on the inside (the area where the wave breaks) and couldn't get out. So he tried to swim parallel with the beach for a little bit, while constantly getting hammered and held down by huge waves. "I thought I was gonna die, bro" this young American charger repeatedly muttered. There was blood all over his arms and legs which were lacerated in various locations as a result of multiple collisions with the reef.

Jason and I decided to head to Rincon to look for some smaller protected spots that we might be able to surf. While we were there we rode by Tres Palmas, which was looking super huge but not super organized. Tons of onlookers were onhand and I remember seeing another surfer on the side of the road who had an abrasion/laceration about the size of a dartboard on his back. After all the nastiness I had seen earlier in the morning, I was happy to find refuge at some spots in Aguadilla that were "merely" head high.

Here are some more pictures that I took:

A (kamikaze) surfer drops into a huge wave at Tres Palmas.

Maria's in Rincon can't handle the size of the swell.