Everybody's Going Surfin'

Surfin' Ay-am-pe.

Well, I've got another open slot on my life list after checking off "take a surfing lesson."

As you saw in the last post, Ayelet and I were at a wonderfully quiet beach during my December break from school. We opted to fly down to the coast after hearing that a bus ride was probably 10 hours. Since Quito sits up so high in the mountains, it pretty much felt like we only glided down to the Pacific after our take off. After a few hours on a bus we walked into to the dirt road town of Ayampe to find our beach cabana. Ayelet was looking for peace and quiet and I wanted to hit the water. After we arrived, I realized I might be getting in over my head. Our first night out walking had huge looking waves and I had no clue what was on the ocean floor. Luckily the next day we met up with a Canadian couple that moved to this tiny beach town and Ryan assured me that a morning surfing lesson would be just fine.

I'm sure you have already had a nice chuckle at the picture of me on that tiny wave, but I am happy to say that I did manage to get up on the board and surf, hang 10, all the usual surf stuff. After my hour and a half lesson I was a bit bruised up and not really looking to get back on the surf board right away. That chance will come sometime down the road where I hope to graduate to a wave a bit bigger than 1-2 feet high.