A show of nature

A member of the surf club asked my surf buddy Chris what he'd missed by not being there on Sunday, and since Chris is gone on another surf trip to the West today, I replied:

You missed an amazing show of nature: totally foggy when we got there, hard to assess the size of the waves, but it looked nice and clean. We paddled out right after another guy did --we caught some fantastic shoulder-to-head high long-ish lefts, and up to a-bit-over-head lefts with a nice, steep wall :D

It was gorgeous when the sun started to rise, barely showing through some thinner parts of fog, profiling the camper van and our cars on the cliff. Then the fog started to thin out and it's just impossible to describe the beauty of the view we had paddling back out after catching a wave: infinite lines showing clearly thanks to the mist climbing off the water, trying to reach the sky...

See my picture in the last page of responses in this thread for a very watered down idea of what it was like (that pic is the shot I posted below, taken after our session, from the cliff, now with more sunlight and a different perspective... also, my camera didn't capture the colors and special light of the moment)

Stoked

Saturday: Sunny chill

Three surfers from three different countries get together and pile up in a Ford Ka to hit the waves all the way on the opposite side of the country

We took off on Saturday at around 6am. Leaving Dublin behind --after a bit of a confunsion with directions-- and once the N4 was surrounded by fields, frost was evident on the sides of the road, on plants and... the driver said, on the asphalt! Sure enough, we were on our to the beach, where the water would be waiting for us at 9 ºC. Our surfboard bags were covered in ice...

There was a very good-looking right-hander nearby, but the tide was starting to fill in and those waves to get fatter. One of us was regular and wanted to surf the left, so we surfed here

Although none of us had a memorable session, we were all satisfied after an almost 2.5 hour-long session. Besides crashing my knee onto some rocks on my way out to the water, and cracking the nose of my board, my feet were totally frozen since the beginning of the session. Since I couldn't feel the board at all, I didn't really feel comfortable walking on it, or even moving my feet after taking the initial stance, so that wasn't fun. But otherwise, it was great to get wet.

After changing to no wind (what a pleasure!), we went to another beach to say hi to a few other members of the club, eat, and look into taking a second dip.




It was a beach break and it didn't look great. Most went back out, two of us decided to enjoy a walk to the point under the afternoon sun.


We found lots of shells and fossils

and took a few shots of a really nice break

and the sunset

Snow in Dublin

After spending New Year's in the Wicklow mountains, we've had a white beginning of the year in Dublin city too. Not only the snow, but also (or mostly) the cold temperatures caused the country to kind of paralyze for a few days. I took it as a chance to stay in town and enjoy it.

I took this below on Friday 7th... Bright and sunny work day (luckily I went home to hang my laundry on my lunch break and I got to be outdoors longer than just to walk over to the other building's café :)


Saturday 8th... snowman day. Magda and I made a snowman on Charlotte Quay:



And walked around and had a nice lunch in a Thai and Vietnamese restaurant downtown. (Thanks Magda for the couple of pix I'm borrowing here, and for a nice day together!)



At night I went to a DJ tropical session with a bunch of couchsurfers, and on the way back home I stumbled onto a snow storm (or almost).



This guy's snowman was bigger than my pile of snow, and they had a snow ball war.


The coolest thing of the night was a huge feeling of happiness, enjoying the snow like a kid, stepping on it and feeling it, making a snow pile in front of a park, observing these guys's fun fight, and capturing the beauty of every single moment through my eyes.


Sunday 9th...


In a totally different topic, I recommend this surf article online with cool shots: Searching the new cool - on DRIFT | perspective(s) in surfing

Grand Canal Dock from my room (3)

Grand Canal Dock from my room (2)

White New Year's

What a wonderful time we had out in the middle of nature, near Enniskerry!


I was meeting Federica and the rest at 7:30pm at Heuston station, and by recommendation of the bus driver, I had a pint to kill time until the meeting time.

Some great people from CouchSurfing got together last night to spend New Year's together. Two carfuls of people made it out to a hostel in Enniskerry... with no cars. Or, to be precise, with a single car, but rather than being on it, we had to push it on the slippery snow!



We finally made it, made the necessary introductions, checked in an hour after the reception's normal closing time, and headed to the kitchen to prepare our New Year's Eve meal. We were done cooking about 20 minutes before midnight XD


Some people weren't done eating their savory food when midnight arrived, but still all of us passed the year in the Catalan (or Spanish) way: eating 12 grapes to the sound of the church bell. Of course we were nowhere near a church or any kind of bell, so we democratically played the bells taking turns, one strike per person, clockwise : )

That turned out to be pretty fun, but definitely easier than in when in the old times I would do it with my family or friends: to the sound of actual bells (no delays allowed!), and eating non-modified grapes with seeds... Because seedless grapes just make it too easy ; )

We all passed the test and arrived to this new year together, so we toasted (though no champagne was found in the room). After some chatting and listening to bad quality music over bad quality radio waves, we moved to the living room, lit a fire and told shared stories, after an unsuccessful trial of tale-reading. Falling asleep on the couches one by one, we ended up moving to our beds at around 3am.

The full moon was beautiful and illuminated everything on sight (when you managed to open your eyes after falling asleep with your contact lenses in). The mountains, the trees, every single element covered in snow... it was a magical night. And, interestingly, that show of nature observed from the balcony-type of hallway to the rooms reminded me of the spectacle of the jungle near Iquitos this last summer, after a session of ayahuasca under the full moon.


Today, on the first day if the year, we got up, checked out, ate breakfast (coffee and left overs from last night and fantastic pies and pancakes freshly cooked this morning), over a long, very interesting conversation about language, culture, tradition and innovation. We then went for a stroll outside the hostel.

We had a nice time by a couple of abandoned vans and cottage totally mingled in with vegetation : )





Back to the hostel, those who hadn't stuffed themselves with pancakes an hour or two earlier, ate lunch with more left overs from last night, over a food-related conversation including Ferran Adrià and a restaurant in Berlin where all waiters and waitresses are blind and everything is dark so that you can experience food (and more) in a different way, which derived into a conversation about things you can do in a place like Berlin.

Since we decided to take off and until we made to Enniskerry, much time elapsed, for the road was in even worse condition than yesterday (totally snowed). Once in town, we headed to a cozy restaurant to enjoy a warm drink (and a guinness) and, most importantly, a very nice time and interesting conversation with a bunch of open-minded, warm-hearted people from all over : )

Bon any a tothom!