Huanchaco - surfing

The beach where we learnt to surf

We spent 2 days in Huanchaco learning to surf. We stayed at Surf Hostel Lily, which was a very basic, but chilled out hostel on the beach and had kittens for Jemma to play with. Our surf instructor was called Tigre and we had a 2 hour lesson on the first day for £10. He gave us both a wetsuit and then we carried the extra large surf boards to the beach where he taught us how to lie on them and then paddle when a wave came and spring up/ The first time we tried it in the water was a success and we both stood up and surfed straight away. The subsequent times were not so much of a success for me. Once I was up on the board, I could surf quite easily and keep my balance, but the actual getting up to the standing position was really hard and a hell of a lot of sea water was swallowed and many belly flops performed. Jemma was quite good at getting stood up on the board but would always seem to walk backwards off it. By the end of the lesson, I think I had stood up about 5 times.

The next day we had another go, but it was even harder psychologically, as I now knew how difficult it was, meaning that I actually stood up less on the second lesson than the first. It suddenly dawned on me how dangerous it was when I asked him: 'I'm scared, is this dangerous?' and he said 'well yes, all extreme sports are dangerous'. It hadn't hit me until then that surfing was an extreme sport and I worried I might injure myself for the rest of the trip. In fairness, I don't think it is that easy to injure yourself whilst surfing, although the board did conk me on the head a few times, and the waves were massive and there were a few times I thought I might drown. I also stood on a sea urchin and had a spike stuck in my toe. But apart from that, we were fine. The only thing we did have, were very achey muscles, Particularly my stomach muscles for some reason. After the second lesson, I had managed to stand up about three times and was really disappointed because, surfing itself is such a nice sensation once your'e up, but getting up is just ridiculously hard. Jemma did much better and stood up that majority of the time. I think its because she has less fear. I definitely want to give it another go when we next get the opportunity; looking back, it was quite fun.