LEARNING CURVE
However, when we jumped into the water to try to catch some waves from amongst the 20 or so professional surfers and Tahitian locals, it became clear that it wasn’t quite as easy as it looked! I felt like my eyes were popping out of my head with fear, while a couple of the Aussie surfers who were out there were just laughing and joking around with the local Tahitians. It was one of the most frightening experiences of my life and at the same time so exhilarating, just to sit there next to those guys that I am used to seeing in the movies at a wave I felt that I knew so well from all the photos and videos I had seen but that I had no idea how I was going to catch. Every time a set came in, the pack would move around but highly respected local surfer, Raimana Van Bastolaer, would call out who was going to get each wave and no matter how deep they were, they would have to go if he had called their name and everyone else would respect his call. It was truly insane to see how deep some of the surfers were taking off and making the barrels. It was amazing to be there so close to such a violent force of nature, but at the same time feel like it wasn’t going to get you because the waves were just so perfect.
In the end I had to try to get a smaller one, which were the first ones of the sets, as all the set waves had someone’s name on them and even so, when I got to my feet, my fins still spun out (I blame Boujmaa for that since he stole my nice fins that I had bought especially for the trip and left me with the crappy plastic ones ahem) and I ended up face planting at the bottom of the wave and getting absolutely slammed and lifted up and over and slammed once again into the reef. Then, to my dismay, I was laying in about ankle deep water and I looked out to see the much bigger second wave of the set looming up on me, ready to annihilate me. There was really nothing at all that I could do. I was in that proverbial situation between a rock and a hard place, only the hard place was a massive churning mass of white water travelling at me way too quickly and the rock was razor sharp coral that is supposed to be extremely good at giving you infections. I just decided to get to my feet and starfish jump into the white water and then try to stop the wave from flipping me over so I wouldn’t hit my head. In the end, I was lucky on that one and the wave took me over the reef to where I was able to swim through the lagoon and back out through the channel. Lesson learned – not quite ready for Teahupo’o on a surfboard yet, especially with that crowd!!