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Session: Holy Week Crowd!

Written by Splaktar

Thursday March 20 2008 04:00:00 PM

Surf spot: San Bartolo, Peru

Session's Rate:

Wind direction: No wind

Wind Strength: Light

Nb waves ridden: 6

Length of the surf session: 3 hours

Surfboard ridden: 9" Longboard

Fins: 3

Weather and water temp: 78 F air, 72 F water

Waves height: 1.5m-2m /5ft-6ft

Waves Quality:
- Ordinary

Waves Shape:
- One peak

Description:

Holy Week holidays make almost the whole week, just like a Sunday. This means that the beaches are overcrowded and the surf is almost unsafe due to so many young kids and other surfers. I went down to San Bartolo for one of my normal weekday sessions, no big deal... the place was packed. There was a 'parking full' sign at the entrance, but they still let me in.

There were cars parked in almost every open spot along the road and there was only room for 1 way traffic. Amazingly due to it being late afternoon, I did find myself a good parking spot. Farther than usual, but not bad at all. The whole afternoon the southern wave had about 20-30 people on it (more than I'd ever seen before). It seemed like it would get overcrowded at around 30 and people would start talking about going to Santa Rosa/Maria or they would swim across to the central wave. This repeated most of the afternoon as only a few people actually stayed at this wave (including me).

The waves were pretty nice 5-6 footers and there was a much larger wait between sets than normal. This meant a lot more time to rest and look at the scenery, which caused a lot of people to leave because they got bored. But the water was great, this was the first afternoon in weeks that I'd been here w/o a strong onshore wind causing everything to get bumpy and choppy as hell. Today it was smooth and really enjoyable.

I caught a bunch of the rights trying to work on some frontside surfing. But I had practiced backside so much already that the few waves that I really caught well, I ended up going backside. I'm still not really getting the hip rotation part of the turn down well. I can tilt the board and put weight on my back foot just fine though. I also need to work on re-transfering that weight back to the center after I turn. Glad I had plenty of time in the water, it allowed me to work on some stuff even though I spent most of the day dodging people who had already caught the wave.

There was one small kid that seemed to be the worst of them all. He was a nice guy, but he would paddling and try to catch almost every wave. But he only really caught about 10% of them. This sucked because I would always give way to him and then he wouldn't catch the wave. But in Peru this respect and right of way seems to be forgein to most people. I guess I need to get used to that. I just don't want any mid-air body-to-body collisions.

Buddies:

Created: Tuesday March 25 2008 01:51:25 PM

Modified: Tuesday March 25 2008 01:51:25 PM

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