Surfing 🏄

For the first time, I had the feeling of experiencing a real New Zealand summer day: the sun was heating up and temperatures reached around 25-30 degrees. Add to that a blue sky and a light breeze.
Perfect conditions to try a surfing lesson.
Yes, you read that right: surfing. After all, I can't leave New Zealand without at least standing on a surfboard once.

Surfing is practically a national sport here, as you can surf almost anywhere - the country is made up of coasts for half of it, after all.
So I booked a nice two-hour lesson, without any big expectations. Maybe that was a good thing...
There were eight of us and two cute surfers as instructors. Really with long blonde hair, suntanned, and sunglasses. The instructors, not us.
The group was quickly divided into those who had taken a lesson before and the absolute beginners.
We had to be explained what a surfboard is (but we had figured that out ourselves!) and then something about waves and currents or whatever. As you can see, I didn't understand that, but it wasn't relevant to me anyway. I had other problems...

The dry practice on the beach for getting up was more interesting. First the back leg, then the leading leg, and then stand up sideways; like a half burpee. It was pretty easy on the beach, no problem! So we enthusiastically went into the water.
And then everything was so easy: as soon as we got in the water, we threw ourselves onto the board, paddled out a bit, and then it was off to the races. We surfed one wave after another, it was a lot of fun.

Not.

As absolute beginners, we didn't even know when to stand up when the wave caught us. Our sweet instructor (Jake, ahh) pushed us a bit and shouted 'Pop up!' So: back leg, front leg, balance.
Suddenly, it wasn't that easy anymore.
To make it short: I managed to have a relatively decent ride three times, the rest ended up in the water. Others were more successful, they could already choose their own waves and surf on them, but I was a hopeless case. Jake really tried hard with me and he also said that I wasn't the worst beginner, but what else could he say?

Now I would like to add that I grew up on the Baltic Sea. Our cute inland water will never be a 'real' sea. Now that I fell into the waves of the brutal Pacific Ocean, I could feel that there was salt in the water! And not just a little... Every time I fell off the board, which happened quite often, this highly saline water flushed into my eyes, nose, ears, just everywhere! It burned, I was thirsty, and I also had to go to the bathroom!

I was slowly losing interest.
The last few minutes, I just lay on the board and watched the others. I think another German also lost interest, which reassured me.
But two hours go by and I was somewhat glad when we went back to the beach.
My biggest success of the day was not getting a sunburn. I got a lot of free nose rinses and had to get all the salt out of my hair and skin in the evening.

After such a tiring day, I just chilled in the afternoon. I also have a Sunday, after all.
At the waterfront, a choir sang Christmas carols, quite funny with 25 degrees and sunshine. But many New Zealanders dressed up, so they make an effort!

Will I surf again? No.
First of all, I won't have the time and opportunity to do so in Germany, and in New Zealand, you have to pay quite a bit for hours. It's not worth it to me.
Nevertheless, I changed my profile picture, now I'm standing on a surfboard. It's okay to show off a bit, and who really cares about the whole truth? ;)