Posing as a chica surfista

I came to Playa Tamarindo to learn to surf. So, I woke up Sunday morning and headed to my first class. Fortunately, there were only two of us in the class. Unfortunately, the other guy was pretty much a natural. Even though it was his first time, he got up on his first try and started surfing. Then, there was me. Lets just say I drank about six gallons of sea water and received tons of nice encouraging words from the teacher (the same words I use when a student is so far off base I don`t know where to go next). That was the first hour of class. Miraculoulsy, the second hour went much better and I started to surf. I knew I`d finally made it when the teacher left me alone to go check on the other guy.

Having limited time and probably too much pride, I signed up for another lesson that afternoon. This went much better and I had a really good teacher who changed my stance to something that works much better for me. After two classes in one day, I pretty much had rubbed all the skin off my thighs, stomache, and hands and was so sore I could barely move. But, I was having so much fun!

I took only one class each of the next two days (the teacher said I would probably end up killing myself in the ocean if I got too carried away like the first day), and I`m now in a place where I can catch my own waves and I get up about as often as I fall down which is good enough for me!

Oh yeah, on my second day there was a baby sea turtle stuck in the surf. He was exhausted and couldn`t get out past the waves to get out to sea. I could totally identify. At the end of a session I can barely paddle the board back twenty feet. So, a real surfer took the baby turtle out past the big breaking waves to set him free!