Bluebottles

I went out to Durban without Rachel and Thaila today (they were busy). Dion was there and he took my mom and I down onto the beach to show us that it was a waste of time. There was an on-shore wind which brought in truck loads of bluebottles.  The waves were choppy and rough. 

My mom and I left. We just drove around Durban for a while. 

Afterwards we started driving home, but took a detour into Umdloti. We drove along the beach looking at the waves. No one was in the water. It looked a bit dodgy. The waves were rough but better than Durban. I decided that I would just go for a swim first to see how rough it was, and if there was a rip, before I took my board in.

It was freezing. Not too rough and no rip, but still a bit sketchy that I'd be the only one in the water. I would have gone out if Rachel and Thaila were with me.  On our way out of Umdloti we passed this adorable little hippy house.

It's been raining for about a month now but it cleared on Sunday. We went surfing. Dion was there and he gave us another lesson. The sea was really rough so we didn't bother going to backline while we cant duckdive. I always seem to get injured and this time I got cut on my wrist and foot plus a couple of bruises :(

 That's Gaby

After 4 or 5 lessons (6 o'clock in the morning) our coach said we don't need him anymore so we go on our own. We have learnt how to stand up on foamies and now we're paddling out to back-line for real waves. We can't duck-dive with our long boards so its hard to get out at high tide.  Durban beaches have no waves in summer so we're looking for a better one to learn at.

We found an instructor that used to be the captain of the KZN surf team. He offered to coach us for FREE.
Jess (right of me) was our photographer  for the day. Follow her blog here. She made my BEAUTIFUL banner :D

He gave Thaila (left) and I boards (Rachel has her own)

We started off catching foamies

After a while he called us out and told us what we were doing wrong.

Thaila's first time surfing