July 10, 2008: San Sebastian/ Biarritz: “SMASHED Surfari”
We arrived in San Sebastian at 7am on a rainy, cold Sunday morning (on July 8th). We needed to kill time until our noon pickup at the surf shop by the “European Backpackers” aka “Smashed Travel” group. As no businesses or indoor public spaces were open between the hours of 7 am and 10 am, we were, for all intents and purposes, homeless. I took off my shorts to change into pants outside.
Me and Danny expressing our doubts about making it to surf camp.
We found a stoop outside of a bank and begged for money unsuccessfully from the few people who were awake. Finally, after feeling cold, wet, and hungry and not sure how much longer we would make it (a huge exaggeration obv.) we noticed that several of the passerbyers were carrying massive baguettes and found the one bread and coffee place in town where we could get food, warmth, and shelter. We spent two hours there, ate three loaves of bread and loaded ourselves up on lots of tea. We also paid in small change and were asked if we got the money by begging, kinda true and not surprising that the waitress would ask judging by our appearances. Thereafter, we walked into the surf shop that finally opened to kill even more time. We tried on clothing that Bret from Flight of the Concords would buy, tried out the skateboards and hackey-sacked (both inside the store, which definitely pissed off the dude who was working there.) Once we got bored and tired, we found another café to loiter in. We didn’t buy anything there and only slept for half an hour. Finally were picked up by Jules at noon, after trying to guess for nearly an hour who Toby with a van would be. We were pleasantly surprised when (s)he, Jules, arrived, as Smashed Travel seemed pretty disorganized up to this point.
Jules- a woman (perhaps), was truly androgynous. Tall, lean, powerful surf instructor with chiseled body and pronounced jaw line. “A true bro. More of a man than I will ever be. What a dude” (some of the jokes we made about her). We liked him a lot.
The “Smashed Travel Surfari” itself- This Surf camp was recommended by our good friend Kelsy (only to later find out that she never actually Surfed but recommended it because she had a romantic fling and loved the drinking culture). Nevertheless, good call, Kelsy, we had an awesome time, for some of the same and some different reasons. The camping site was right by the ocean and we enjoyed a three days/two nights all-inclusive Surfari experience. The delicious food was cooked by a former chef and current surfer bro named Tony. They provided unlimited drinks (beer and sangria) and no surf instruction whatsoever, a 10 minute “dry” lesson notwithstanding, despite the 10 foot waves crashing on our heads. Approximately 15 campers were there during our stay and almost all of them were women.
An interesting and not so funny (at the time anyway) story from the trip is that we were told we would be surfing in San Sebastian (in Northern Spain) as advertised on fliers, so we did not bring our passports with us. Turns out we ended up crossing the border into France to Surf in Biarritz, a beautiful coastal city with huge surf (so we weren’t complaining).
The view of the coastline at Biarritz
Not having our passports with us in a foreign country caused Danny and me much anxiety. But, in the end, we safely made it back to our passports in Barcelona as it didn’t even appear that there was any border security or checkpoint between Spain and France.
Back to surf camp. All of the instructors had crazy pseudonyms, such as Smacks, One and Cha Cha. For three days, Dre, Danny, and I were referred to as Bull, Chick’n, and Cheese, based on our respective hometowns, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Louisville (figure it out). Incidentally, when we weren’t Bull, Chick’n and Cheese and felt like using fake names throughout our stay in Europe, we were Andres, Rafael, and Giuseppe (as Andres is already an “exotic” name).
showin the guns on the beach with other campers...surf's up!
The surf itself- We surfed for two full days and mainly caught the white water waves (after the huge deep waves had already broken) to learn the technique, which was still pretty intimidating as the undertow and waves themselves were extremely powerful and the only instruction we were given was this 10 minute beach technique lesson.
This Cali surfer bro describes the surf better than I ever could. We got like sooo barrelled and sooo pitted, man! By the end of the second full day of surfing, I decided to swim out to where the waves were breaking and try to catch one of the enormous waves as they crashed. Once I got out to where the waves were crashing, I got in position and decided to try to take a huge one in. I caught it at just the right time to get to the top of the wave. Unfortunately, when I attempted to stand on the board I was too far forward and nosedived. The wave crashed down on me and I was submerged for about 20 seconds (which felt like a lifetime) and swallowed some water. After swimming to the surface, feeling very disoriented, and being off of the board at this point, successive waves kept coming down on me, pulling me under for up to 20 seconds at a time only for the next wave to come crashing down on me. To make matters worse, the undertow was strong, making it difficult to swim any closer to shore. Also, nobody knew that I was out there, which made it doubly scary. After panicking for several minutes, I got my senses together and was able to get on my board and body surf one of the waves in. I chilled on the beach for a while until I felt confident enough to get back in. Then, after calming down, I realized that surf time was waning and got back on the horse for the last hour of surf.
Smashed Pub Crawl- One of the nights, our trip organizers offered a pub crawl to three different bars. At each one we were given free drinks. Our champ, Dre, participated in two different drinking competitions, winning one, and he would have won the other if Titus from Amsterdam didn’t blow the boat race. We’re proud of you nonetheless, Dre.
After surf camp, we came very close to planning a day trip to Pamplona, which is an hour from San Sebastian, and is where the world famous Running of the Bulls festivities occur each summer in early July. The week long celebration was taking place at the very time that we were there, but it got too complicated to get there and ultimately fell through…So in the end, we couldn’t quite live up to Hemingway, too bad.
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