Kitesurfing!!

I have spent some pretty good days now on my 8m kite, we got lucky and got a streak of good wind during the weekend, which meant there were some waves to be had as well out on the reef. This however is mostly for the brave (stupid?) ones, as the best waves comes when the reef starts becoming naked and exposed at low tide. Which is not so great if you fall, and get dragged over it. I ventured out a couple of times, but a lot of the times I chickened out and went back in to practice on my freestyle tricks instead. The backloop is almost there now, my legs are getting more bruised by the day from all the crashing in the water! :-)
The surf club is really convenient and I really start to appreciate it. I haven’t pumped my kite by hand a single time since I got here, as they have a hose with compressed air you can use. It is quite easy to over-pump your kite though, which I did twice, which results in that the valves open when you crash it in the water, which in turn means you’re up for a good swim back, with a deflated kite.
As time passes by, it seems like there’s less and less beginners in the way as well, which is great. That way you don’t have to spend 20 minutes to get past everyone going out, which was quite a hassle in the beginning when there were over 100 kites in the bay and I was underpowered on my 8.
Not only the pro’s hang on the beach, the coming ones do so too. The other day I helped a Filipino kid to get his chewing gum tattoo right and was rewarded a chewing gum for the trouble. He, and other kids hang out on the beach, play with the gear, and talk to the foreigners. And then the little older kids, like one about maybe 12 years old, already know how to kite. Shit, when he’s 18 he will be the world champion, I’m sure!
And yes, in the end I have given in and bought a 12m kite. I actually planned on doing this if the wind proved not strong enough for my 8m. It is really great to have here, especially now that I am almost a light-wind expert, being forced to surf on my 8m when most people ride their 12's. I have been out in as light winds as 5 m/s now and I can do it, like today, I was alone with a handful others that also could make it work. It is a struggle though, 5-10 minutes of gaining altitude, then a jump, and you're back at square one again. Great to be able to get out though, it beats hanging out at the beach bar with the frustrated bunch, talking about how shitty the wind forecasts are :-)


Ready for action!
 
Hanging out at the ocean republic surf club.

You can see that this is going to be a great day…

Strong wind that day! Check out my hair.. :-)

Finally, some photos of me while kiteing. Thanks Ruben! It is always a hustle to get photos as everyone want to be out on the water on the good days. Got about 2-3 meters of air here.

I had some more air…

Good pull in the 8m that day

I like the spray that remains on the surface after taking off

An epic day…

Doing these sharp turns create some nice spray. I love doing this!

The road just behind the beach by ocean republic

David got some air too


Take a look at the spray when he takes off…

Ruben taking a rest.

David lost his board, not a bad shot, don’t you think?

My turn to take a rest.

The road leading down from my hotel to the beach

Japolitaly, something as innovative as a japanese-italian restaurant! You can see the beach just utside the windows. Perfect for a snack at mid-day.
 
Someone having a bad kite-day… It happens almost every day around here.

More from Boracay

Another number of days passed by here on the island, which means some really great kitesurfing, parties and other experiences. I think I can get used to this :-)

Eating out here is cheap, and if you go to the right place, pretty good as well. The other day we went to the fish market, which is just that, surrounded by restaurants where you can have the fish you bought cooked in the style you prefer. Nothing beats fresh seafood, and being it so cheap here, I just can’t get enough. It’s like the mango shakes!

Another food related experience was to have dinner at Gustavs house. He lives  in a room in the house of a Filipino family, and they’ve got some kind of a deal that if he buys the ingredients they will prepare the food for him. This was great! We went to buy some fresh tuna, vegetables and rice and had a feast on the terrace. Gustav has been here for a month and I was impressed to hear him haggle in tagalog, the language people speak here. "How much with a discount?" :-)
We forgot to tell them not to cook all the rice, so we got one kilos worth, which was a bit too much, even though we both eat quite a lot. It still blows my mind that we both didn’t know we were going to the same place and met here by chance out on the reef, on the other side of the globe!!

These kind of places, like Boracay, and the Philippines in general, draw a lot of people you normally don't come across while shopping for milk in the supermarket back home. For example, the other day we went to a party in a massive villa up one of the hills, owned by some russian guy who once bought it, and now lost interest of staying there. People come from all over, as the Philippines is a bit far away from everything. As many from America, Europe, the Arab states and Asia. So, every now and then there's parties like this going on in similar places, with a real mix of people. The surfing aside, getting to know all these people would almost do it for me, making my stay here worth while.

The wind has been a bit crappy around here the latest days, usually just working in the morning. One afternoon we rented scooters and went around the island. There's actually quite a lot to see around here, besides the centre. The contrast is striking, at the white beach you can pay up to 1000 pesos for something to eat in the restaurants, and if you go outside where the locals live, you get to the real Philippine prices and pay maybe 20 pesos for a small burger. The centre of the island is super developed, but once out of the centre you still find the classic dirt roads surrounded by simple sheds and houses, with kids playing in the streets and stray dogs chasing you when you drive by. Even though people around here who don't work directly with the tourists have nothing, they are extremely friendly and nice. I have written it before, and I still think so, that the Philippines has been the best destination in Asia for me this far.

Another magical sunset on the white beach.

Partying with the Spanish gang and Nicole. Why is Jägermeister popular in Spain?!?!

 
Shopping for some fish at the fish market.

Not much left of this guy…

Really? Is it necessary to put up a sign in the bathroom that you shouldn’t wash your feet in the basin? Good to know though the next time I feel the urge to cleanse my toes before eating.

 
Some drinks while watching the sunset

A dedicated fruit juice bar. Just 50 pesos a shake!

 
David and Ruben got a much better hotel than I did…

Party at “casa blanca”, a view from the roof terrace.

I think we all had a great time…
 

…until someone started talking about jumping in the pool. And yes, someone did!! :-)

Gustav shopping for some vegetables

Fried rice and grilled tuna at Gustav’s place

These things fall from the trees around here. Not bad! I just love the tropics! :-)

Take a look at this colorful spider!

Some goats in one of the backstreets having a go at the garbage.

This is what the undeveloped beach front at bulabog looks like

 

 
Going for a spin on a scooter

Resort for sale! Since when, is the question I asked myself..

Quite nice views around there

A tricycle wreck guarded (?) by mr Pig.

Dean and I stopped by the spider bar on the way back to return the scooters

Tricycle madness in front of the scooter rental

Boracay!

About five seconds after we disembarked the boat at the port of Boracay, we got a "guide". These are people hanging around the harbour waiting for incoming tourists to take them to hotels where they have some kind of kickback. We tried to shake ours off, but in the end she tagged along on the fully loaded tricycle, under my protests. Also, we hooked up with a fellow traveller/kiter/diver to share the room which turned out really good, so now we're three people. I really like this about travelling, it is not so pretentious and difficult. You need a place to stay? We too, let's find one together then.
Of course, our guide told the trike-driver to take us to a place she knew, not much to do, so we went there and had a look, then we spent the best of an hour to try to shake her off. Everywhere we went prices instantly got inflated as soon as the hostel staff saw we had company. In the end, we divided up, and that did the trick. Finally on our own.
It was raining, and it was in the middle of the night and dark, so in the end we settled for a hostel as good as any other. There was some kind of smell in the room, and we just stayed there that very night.

The first impression of Boracay was not very good at all, I really did expect something better, more real, and if not real, more nice. This changed though with the daylight. We took a stroll down the beach in the morning, and I have to say, it is simply fantastic! Powder like sand stretching for miles, white, palmtrees, and crystal clear water.
We spent the next morning running around looking for a more decent place to stay, and in the end we found a nice room in a hotel just in the middle of the island, conveniently located 200m from the kite beach and 200m from the party beach.

The first few days we had really bad wind over here, and the deal here is that the earlier, the better. This has proven pretty tough :-) Virtually every night we have been out at the bars, sometimes coming home as late as 5-6 in the morning, then going up at 7 to be at the kite-beach around 8 to catch the strongest wind. I can say this much, with 2 hours sleep, pulling off any kind of new trick is.... not easy :-)

We met some guys from Madrid aswell that are here for kiteing, they were really desperate the poor guys. They had been here for one week already when we arrived and had almost no wind at all. It has been really great to have a big group of Spanish people to hang out with, I still really like the Spanish way of socializing, the jokes, the big groups, the spontanoety and not always having to plan everything in detail and split the bills to the last cents.
A really good group of people, great fun, and of course, this is also a cause of why the nights tended to be so long... I almost felt like I was back in the good old days in Spain, the fluency in Spanish is also still there, although it has been slumbering for the last couple of years :-)

So in short, life here on the island is about waking up at 8, going to the kite-beach and surf for a couple of hours, try to avoid hitting the palmtrees with the kite when taking off, hang out with the other surfers and have a few mango shakes in between the sessions, if you're lucky you can keep going until about 4 O'clock. Then pack down the gear, go home, have a shower and a rest and meet up some friends for something to eat, have a few beers, sometimes more than a few, which usually means the night ends in one of the discos.

I knew I wasn't going to be the only one here from my home spot "Habo Ljung", the first day I met up with Ida and Laura who I knew were going to be here during the same time. But, that was it, I thought. The other day a guy came up to me in a bar "Hey man! Don't you surf in Habo Ljung??", yet another local. And while I was out on the reef, looking for some nice waves, someone very familiar looking passed by. I turned around and raced toward him to take a closer look. And yes, it was Gustav, another friend from Habo Ljung. I had no idea he was here! Really cool to have so much people here from your home spot. Sometimes I feel like I'm on some kind of reunion. Let's see who else here I already know... :-)

Speaking about the people here, it's probably the most mixed crowd I have seen so far. There's really no dominant nationality here among the tourists. I've met people from Kuwait, Papua new guinea, Australia, Europe, North America, Japan, Russia.. Virtually every single country seems represented. The age group here is really different from the rest of the countries I've been to too, it seems like the 20-somethings stay in Thailand, some might venture further east to Vienam, but here in the Philippines most people seem to be around 30, 30+. Which is totally fine by me, sometimes, especially in Thailand I felt a bit old when there was so much focus on drinking cheap buckets of alcohol and everyone seemed to have their first time abroad. Having the conversation "Wow, you know what, I met someone from another continent today!" is not as excillirating anymore, though I try to still share the excitement :-)

Sunsets. The sunset here at Boracay is also something worth mentioning. It is simply magical to sit down on the beach, have a nice coctail in your hand and some good company with some nice music in the background. And there's several locations where you can enjoy the sunset. I think the best so far was in a bar, far away from the maddening crowd, that was like climbing up on to the edge of a cliff, with the crystal clear water below accessible by a bamboo ladder. That was great!

So this has been it on Boracay so far. On Sunday, I said good bye to Juan Carlos who took the plane home to Valencia, and wasn't too happy about it. I kind of understand why :-) It has been really excellent to travel together and I had a really great time. This has been especially fun as we seldom get a chance to meet up as we live so far away from eachother.

“Is this the place? Well, ok. I guess we can survive here for a few days.”

 

Cramming ourselves and the baggage together in the tricycle, going to the hotel we found.

 

A beer at the beach in February. Life can be worse than this.

 

Juan Carlos surviving, avoiding dehydration...

 

A drink at the boom boom bar. Yes, it’s actually named that way.

 

Sunset at Café del Mar

 

And this is what it looked like..    

One of the most well-dressed dogs I met so far.

 

Taking it easy at the Freestyle Academy. This is where you spend your time in between the surf sessions. Tough, eh?

 

I bought a pair of shorts in Bali that got too large. This nice lady fixed it for 50 pesos. 

The cable guy’s here! How the !#¤%@ does he know which cable to cut and not?!?

Eating at the munchies. An extremely energy dense meal, or what do you think?

 

I can confess that I consumed a little bit more than one of these by now. If I only had a dollar for every marketing cliché you can find on the back… Is there any brewery around anymore that just brew “a good beer”?

A tricycle on one of the smaller roads

One of the less crowded beaches on the island. A real gem. Ideal for watching the sunset and chill with a drink.

The spider house, you can see it on the previous picture, up on the mountain to the left. Great drinks, great views.

Climbing down the bamboo ladder to dip my feet in the sea. This is how clear the water is here.

Once again, the sunsets here aren’t bad at all…

 
Some other crazy kitesurfers from Spain we got to know and hung out with. Never a boring moment!

This is what a backyard shirt-factory looks like.

 
Just a regular street

The parties on the island just go on and on and on. It’s tough to get up at 7 to surf after a night like this.