Sunrash

Tom da beach bum

My face is covered in sun rash. Oh great. No surfing, no sun... Exposing my skin to sun right now would fuck up my face even more, so now i just have to lay it low and stay in the shade.

Choose to go with the boys. I watched the advanced surfers and photographed them until Denny, the founder and owner of the surf camp, called Abdul, and told him that I have to move my room again, cause there's a couple coming today and I'm staying at a couple's room. He also told us that a group of professional surfers would be arriving to our camp in the near future !

Spiders

After moving my stuff - which I had just managed to scatter around my room, naturally - we went to the pharmacy but for my astonishment they didn't sell Aloe Vera! WTF. I didn't know that' possible.. to have a pharmacy and not sell Aloe Vera. We are at a surf town, mind you. So you'd think treatin sun burns with Aloe Vera would be an everyday thing.

stretching before surfing

Abdul, the guy who went to the pharmacy with me, is the advanced groups surf instructor. He is such a nice guy and always smiley. When I asked him where did he get his fluent english from, he told me he used to study English lit in uni. Abdul also used to be a surf instructor but now he's a surf guide. The difference between these two are that while an instructor helps the beginners, tells them what to do and is with them in the water, the surf guide takes the people, who can already surf, to the best spots and tells them how to get in and how to get out (since the advanced surfers usually have been surfing point breaks or reef breaks - so it's not like you can just walk in along sand). So Abdul watches Tom&Sam&the rest of the guys surf and occasionally surfs with them too. Talk about a nice job...

Justin waxing his board

We got back to Spiders, the point break the guys were surfing, and watched the 5-6 foot waves. Tobias snapped his board, but luckily Ebrahim had a spare one, so he borrowed his quad (quad = a surf board with 4 fins, 2 on each rail) to Tobias. Phil discovered that Tobias had inserted the back fin had been placed into the wrong rail, that certainly didn't help surfing..

Abdul aka "Slabdul" went in when the guys came out. Apparently Abdul is famous for surfing a "rock". It's kind of a reef but just with lava rocks. I bought almonds ("alluz") from a cute old nutman who always patrols the Crucru beach (the place I always surf with the rest of the beginners), Devils Rock, Spiders, and Banana Spot/Beach. The nuts were sugar coated which made them delicious!

After Spiders, we drove up north along the coast to check the waves among the other surf spots. We went for lunch in Tamrine - everyone got the traditional Moroccan dish: tajine. It's this dish that has to cook for an hour on this plate undrneath a lid (tajine). It's a bit hard to explain but just check the picture above.

Tom & sunset surf

After driving on the coast the guys decided that the waves were the best at Spiders, and so we drove back there and the guys went out for a sunset surf.