Beautiful Sport

Km Driven: 6848

I've decided that surfing really is a beautiful sport and one of the few in the world that can be both exciting and calming at the same time. I think that it's the dishotomy of the two that makes it so appealing to me and I think that it's pretty rare to find elsewhere.

Let me explain. In surfing you spend the beginning of your session fighting through the fury of the oncoming waves, ducking and weaving your way from the beach all the way out to the back of the swells. Once you push through the crashing waves and manage to get to the open ocean, you are greeted with an almost unmatchable serentity. Just imagine yourself sitting on a gently swaying ocean, hundreds of metres from shore with nothing around you but the sound of the wind and the smell of the sea. How can that not be perfect?!

That's my favourite part of surfing, the calm time sitting on your board that you get before catching a wave. You can just sit and relax however long you want, or you can chat with those around you about politics and beer, or you can slip into the water and cool off before heading back to shore.

And that's only half the sport! Then you actually have to do the surfing part of surfing. So now you go from the super-serene state of waiting into the hectic and adrenaline heavy wave riding. It's so cool how you can move from one to the other so quickly.

Well, enough of my ranting about my secret sport love. Today I'm in a place called Surfer's Paradise (great name for a city) along the Gold Coast. The Gold Coast is a reaaaaaaaally long stretch of beach that goes on forever, almost. Yesterday I visited some McGill friends in Brisbane, where I reached my most northern point in Australia. As of now I'm only heading south, back to Sydney to (sigh) return my home on wheels in 6 days. I've stayed in the streets and refused to go to campsites because of largely shady sites

Ok, so back to surfing because I wasn't done before. I had one a really unique close encounter a few days ago out in the water. It was the end of the day and there were only a few other people around me as I paddled out to the calm waters at the back of the crashing waves. As I turned around to look out at the beach I saw something rise up out of the water about 10 meters to my left. Picture something like a whale slowly surfacing and looking at you. It quickly scurried back underwater. Ok, so it wasn't a whale, but it was a huge turtle! I swam over to where it had been and because the water is crystal clear here, I looked down under my board to see it slowly manouvering about. It was giant! It must have been a metre wide

No sharks yet, only turtles