d7: a gift for your soul

I get up to the sound of the roosters and realize my cell phones time is off. Ok, no problem, I just need to get ready and get to the beach: it’s still kinda dark. Looking forward to paddle out, I see what look like quite bad conditions: small waves at a shore break that close out most of the time. I think about it but the extremely brown color and floating things is not appealing at all and turn around… while I’m on my way back home I run into a girl with a surfboard and join her to check the surf again: I figured she’d know better than I, since I just got to this place last night and don’t know what to expect! She was meeting a friend a bit further up and the surf lookd better from that spot. The first girl wanted to jog rather than surf, but the other girl and I were ready to paddle out, so we all ended up stepping onto the sand for a session.

I was missing the little cord to which one attaches their leash, but luckly a local surfer had just gotten there and I asked him for help. Like McGiver, he grabbed a piece of rope lying around and cut the right size with a piece of glass that was also lying around… on the sand! I paddled out: it was an okay session, lots of close-outs and a break that’s too fast for me. Out there in the water I chatted with the surfer who helped me with the cord, Kervin, since we were by ourselves for 2/3 of our session… and I find out he’s one of the guys who runs my hostel.

Back home, I took a shower and two of the guys, Kervin and Byron (who would think they are Nicaraguan with these names??), offered some of their breakfast, since they had tons. I only accepted to try a couple of bites from their stuff, but I thought it was a nice gesture. Following up on that I went to a coffeeshop to use free wi-fi and had a watery orange juice and coffee, both of which were very expensive, US$1.5 each.

At 11 I joined the people at the hostel, which is really a surfcamp I guess, to go to Playa Madera. It usually takes 30′ by car to get there although it’s not far, because the roads are bad. Well, now, in the rainy season, “bad” is way short of an adjective to describe how the road was today… in fact, we had to switch from a van to a 4-wheel car because we couldn’t go on, and then we still had to unload the car twice to go through two bad sections. A few times we were all scared that we would flip over or so because the whole on the road were so bad the car was quite tilted (and we had all those board on top!). And it took us about one hour?

Playa Madera is awesome and the stressful trip was worth it (at least to do it every once in a while, not every day!). Pounding waves, stone cliffs and green cliff tops, a low tide that showed lots of yards of wet sand and very few people… because it’s so hard to get there! I had read and someone just told me as well (a local) that people here don’t want to use their cars to go to the beaches because they risk their cars so much! … and mechanicians ara expensive here.

The surf wasn’t exactly perfect… most waves closed out and it was scary to see! every now and then a wave opened fairly well, but I didn’t catch any of those, lol. I decided to leave my board behind at a couple of different sets because I was scared with those terrible closing waves. Otherwise I didn’t have much trouble paddling out using a channel. The really only rode two waves and not for very long because they closed out: the first one was the longest ride and I ended up flying over the top of the lip to avoid getting worked (my board didn’t follow me but that’s okay, my leash is not that old ; )   Most of the other waves I paddled for  I didn’t go for because they were clear close-outs… a couple though I did catch hoping they wouldn’t close out and ended up getting worked right after standing up.

It was good exercise and an amazing gift for my eyes and soul : )

d4: Leaving Miami: impressions

Today is my last day in Miami. It’s sad to leave Max, who has been a great host the few days I’ve been in Miami beach: friendly and helpful, we’ve had nice conversations on his scooter and over dinner. Max is the first couchsurfer at whose place I stay and it’s been a great experience. Thanks, Max! : )

Miami is a place with a great weather and beautiful beaches, which make it a target for beach tourism, of course. It seems that nightlife is big here, although I haven’t tried that, and I haven’t seen the financial district or downtown either, ergo I do not know Miami as a whole. A couple of people I met here noted that people in Miami beach are very moveable. It’s expensive: the first night we tried to eat out, at my arrival, I saw average-looking restaurants twhose cheapest main courses cost 20 bucks!

 We ended up going to a Mexican place, where we went back yesterday, on my last night -funny enough, the first time I ordered a quesadilla and Max a burrito, and we did the opposite yesterday. 

Talking about prices, I just bought a coffee at the airport for $3.20!!! However, public transportation is affordable: for short distances in Miami beach you can take a type of core shuttles that cost only $25. For longer rides, it’s $2 (or $2.50 with transfer), but I think these are new (higher) prices because Max insisted it cost $1.50 and $2 with transfer.

It’s amazing how much Spanish is spoken here. In Miami (Beach) you don’t need to speak English because most people are latinos. Whenever I started speaking to someone in English because I hadn’t yet heard my interlocutor talk at all, I would end up switching to Spanish because a few seconds later I heard them address someone else in Spanish. At the airport, many announcements are made in Spanish before they are in English (at least in the area I am sitting at while I type this, for flights with Latin-American destinations).

Besides the large quantity of hotels (esp. in Miami beach), some of which of questionable architechtonic taste, and the nice houses along the bay (big houses that must cost a lot of money with boats docked in front of the house -they make for pretty views), Miami has either more or more visible buildings for the sexual amusement of men… I don’t know if they are brothels or just “show” houses, but I’ve seen several places with announcements like the one pictured here.

This picture I took on my way to the airport, a 2-hour long trip including a bus trasnfer that lasted about 40 minutes and an hour-long bus ride with my bags and surfboard… : )