5 day great aussie surf adventure – Philipp's TravelBlog

I booked $title with Mojosurf, look here, and spent 5 days at SpotX.

Monday

We were picked up at 6.15am in Sydney and travelled to SpotX in a huge and luxurious coach. The driver of course was a really cool surfer dude and the journer went by quickly. We arrived at SpotX around 2pm, were shown around the camp and then had our first surfing lesson. We started with some theory about waves, rips and boards. Then we went to the beach and practiced getting up on our feet on the board. Finally we were allowed to start surfing in the water 🙂 since I had the single day before, I managed soon to get up and surf the first rather little waves :D.

In the beginning I wore a wetsuit, but I got rid of it soon. I don’t really like the feeling, I want to feel the water on my skin. The ocean had lovely 20-22°, so I wasn’t cold anyway. Everybody thought I would be really tough, but I wasn’t. It simply was not cold!

The whole lesson was about 2 hours. There was a photographer from Mojosurf with us most times and took awesome photos 🙂 additionally I have taken photos from the beach, the camp and more. But read first, then watch 😉

At 6pm we had dinner. The food was really good. Lots of choice, big portions and tasty food. The night brought an awesome sky full of stars, I could see the whole milky way. But it was so freezing cold that we stayed around the camp fire most the time. We didn’t have a heater in our room, so we were not so warm and comfy at night as I would have liked it, but I could manage.

Tuesday

We got woken up at 8am for breakfast and had our next lesson at 9am. After some stretching we continued practising.
As usual, the lesson took 2 hours. Lunch at 12, next lesson at 2pm. Lunch was just as good as the other meals. I have not eaten that healthy, that much, that regularly in a long time. The chef was really good, nobody had reason to complain.

Dinner at 6pm, like always. Afterwards I bought a rashie, because my belly and my chest was really red and full of rash. The rashie should avoid that. I really like it, it’s an intense blue and feels nice and cozy. Plus, it makes me look more a real surfer dude 😀
I also bought vouchers for photos, Kangaroo Golf and Night Kajaking.

Unfortunately it started to rain heavily later that night and kept going until the morning. It was a real storm during the night.

Wednesday

You know the drill: woken up at 8, breakfast, surf lesson from 9-11, lunch at 12. This lesson we started turning. Again, we did stretching and warm-up before going into the water. We had the afternoon off, which was really good because my body needed a break. Surfing is exhausting, but much more exhausting is fighting your way out into the water in the first place, because the waves hit you all the time and the current want to smack you back onto the beach.

That afternoon I went on the Kangaroo Golf tour, which was nice. I never played Golf in my life before, and will never do so again. It’s not my sport 😉 we were at the driving range, but I kept hitting the ground or the tee instead of the golf ball. It was fun anyway. Unfortunately there were no Kangaroos on the driving range to hit, but on the tracks around there were heaps of them. We walked past and took lots of photos. Kangaroos are shy and tend to hop away when they see you approaching, but I got a few good shots.

I couldn’t do the Night Kajaking because it was raining again :S

Thursday

That day I took a shorter board for the fist time. Beginners start with really long and wide ones. The further you advance, the shorter your board is. I was afraid I would completely fail with the shorter board, but I stood from the first time and it worked really well! Additionally, the shorter board is lighter to carry and easier to turn. The afternoon lesson I took the shorter one again. I was now targeting bigger and more difficult waves, because they are more fun. By now I got really up to speed and overtook the waves before me, meaning I had little jumps down with my surf board. In case you are still not aware: surfing is absolutely awesome!

That night it didn’t rain and there was a canadian school class that night who also did the kajaking. I was the only one not from that class and since the Kajaks were double I went with the instructor. Kajaking at night with that awesome starlit sky was really lovely. After going up the creek for some while we stopped, docked all together and started talking and telling scary/weird stories. It was really good. In the end our instructor was really scared and wouldn’t listen to anymore stories. Then we went back to where we started. There was a flying fish here and then and that was it.

Friday

This morning we had to get up an hour earlier :(. Woken up at 7, surf lesson from 8-10. This was my best run, I got really up to speed with the intermediate board :). We had to be out our rooms already before the lesson, so afterwards there wasn’t much left to do. Showered and got into dry clothes, than took my laptop and checked out the photos from Mojosurf. Finally ordered 30 of them, you can see some of them below.

Our last awesome meal was lunch at 12, at 1 our bus left. A few minutes before that one of the coaches asked us to follow him if we wanted to see a porcupine. They are really rare there, he said he gets to see one every few years only, so I was really lucky 😀

Now I’m sitting on the bus to Byron Bay with the other people from my group, Mojo North. We were 15 people when we got there, only one other guy with me, the rest all girls. 1 went back to Sydney, 2 are staying at the camp for 2 more days, so we’re now 12 people left, me being the only guy. Oh well, not a problem for me 😉
Our bus driver is – of course – another cool surfer dude, and we’re listening to Bob Marley and similar during the 3 hour trip to Byron.

In the camp and im my group there are lots of dutch people and quite a few from Canada, then occasional people from Switzerland, UK, Belgium, Germany. Very rare are Australians. Jess was the only one I am aware off at this camp.
Everybody gets along well, no sign of resentment from any side. Everybody talks about different places and tells funny stories, and the different languages are always a topic.

That was the 5 day great aussie surf adventure, my next post will be about Byron Bay. And now, finally, the photos:

From 2011-05-30 5 Day Great Aussie Surf Camp. Posted by Philipp Hübner on 6/01/2011 (57 items)