Day 9 - Surfing and Driving
Hi it’s Madeline and Claire!!! (and a teensy tiny microscopic bit of help from everyone else but not really)
To start off the day, we woke up bright and early, packed our things, ate breakfast and drove to Cox Bay Beach. We met the surf company there and proceeded to wrestle, shimmy, struggle, squeeze and squish into our skintight wetsuits. Before catching the gnarly waves we had a detailed lesson on the beach focusing on the four P’s of surfing; Pick your wave, Position yourself, Paddle, and Pop up (and Celeste’s secret fifth P, peeing prohibited.) Then we got in the water and tried our hand at surfing! The guides helped us with the first couple waves and then we were free to experiment more independently, while they offered occasional advice. Crystal was a natural and popped up on her first try! Everyone loved surfing and rocked the totally tubular ripple-y waters. After about an hour and half in the water and some very successful surfs, we peeled ourselves out of the soggy, sandy, sticky, salty, sexy suits.
Next we drove to Chesterman Beach where a few of us played in the waves and explored various tide pools that were full of sea stars and aenomes or anenomes, amenones, anenoemes?.?? Claire also got a REALLY bad sunburn.
Then we took a very twisty, uncomfortable and un-nappable three hour drive to Nanaimo. Once there, we dropped off our donations for Red’s Bakery and picked up our Nanaimo bars and Nanaimo cheesecake.
Following that, we went to dinner at Smokin’ George’s BBQ (where John Catucci visited on the show You Gotta Eat Here), we had the place to ourselves because they opened it just for us.
After dinner we went to Piper’s Lagoon to kill time before our ferry at 8:15. There were a billion crabs there and we held a major crab competition in which crabs were compared and judged by their size, beauty, colours and personality. (Leader edit: it was a beautiful lagoon next to shack island and it was insane to watch how quickly the tide was coming in!)
We then boarded the ferry and did ferry things, like take pictures, get snacks, read books, watch the sunset and have weird conversations. Now we’re getting off of the ferry in Vancouver, driving to the Richmond Guide Hall and going to sleep for an early morning tomorrow.
Ok goodnight. See you tomorrow! J
Looks like a fun trip Ungoy. I will have Lorelei and Toby pick you up at the airport today. Can’t wait to see you
ReplyDeleteThe surfing must have been fantastic! It’s on my bucket list of things to try. I agree that the last P should definitely be added to the list. Haha.
ReplyDeleteWay to go Crystal on being such a natural! How did everyone else do?
Bummer about your burn, Claire.
I can’t believe the size of those sea stars!! Crab competition sounds fun too.
You must have felt like celebrities at the bbq place. Not often will a restaurant open just for a small group.
I’m so excited see you Celeste in the next half hour or so. I’m currently waiting outside the van rental place.
Have a safe flight back everyone (but Celeste) and I truly hope to see all again.
Thank you so much Tara and Crystal for making Celeste’s last GG adventure so memorable.
Xoxo
Surfing, so awesome! The fifth P, I love it! I take it Madeline and Claire (maybe others?) are obsessed with crabs. See you soon!
ReplyDeleteWhat an amazing last day. I love your description of the wetsuits - they are always nasty to wiggle into - lol! Thank you Crystal and Tara for giving our girls such a fabulous adventure. I know these will be memories to last a lifetime.
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