29 April (pm)

There was not much swell today, and the wind was a bit light. But I had a good day kiting never the less. After looking around for some waves for a bit ended up spending the morning kiting on some flat water. Practising jumping a little and riding the board backwards. The first day that I was here I saw this guy doing some amazing stuff with his surf board on flat water  Just jumping up and flicking the board around, doing backrolls etc. Which is pretty tricky stuff with a strapless surfboard but he made it look real easy the way he was flicking the board around. Was cool to see.

The people here are really friendly. After dinner with the Swiss guy's I walked back to where I was staying and ran into two different groups of people. Which I hung out with for a bit and chatted to. Friendly people. And this place seems to be really safe. I haven't seen any agro, and it feels safe to be on the streets at night. Plenty of people are hanging out on the streets. It's a good vibe.

29 April - The wind is here Marge!

The wind is here, the wind is here! So the last few days have been full of wind. It has been in from early in the morning to well over sunset, or really it has continued over night. I met some Swiss guy's on the beach Friday (it's Monday today) and have been hanging out with them. Getting a ride in to the beach, kiting eating ect. It's great to have some kiting camaraderie. There's been so much wind that yesterday arvo I needed to just chill out a bit, and sit on the beach out of that water and not on my kite.

I have found some pretty fun waves here too. There is one eye, which is the break that I had heard of before coming. But not to far upwind there is another break that I stumbled on yesterday. It's so far off shore though that I couldn't see the kites on it from the shore line. I was heading up wind to go the the lagoon to say hi to the Swiss guy's, and have a bit of a breather when I saw a couple of kiters on this huge wave in the distance. So went to check it out.

It seems to build up back form the reef a bit, or on a deeper part of the reef or something. But the point is that it doesn't break on shallow reef, which is great. The wave is a fair bit bigger then some of the other stuff around there though. The face of it must get close to twice my hight I guess. But it breaks pretty gently for the most part, with white water just building up and rolling over the top. And its a left hander, so it breaks downwind rather then up wind which I was finding with a lot of the other waves here. That means I can move along it downwind as it's breaking, carving up and down the face a little. The only thing is that at it's peek it's so steep, and big. I come down it so fast that I have to loose some of the speed before I can carve back up the wave a little. This may actually have something to do with the kite that I was sing at the time. As I was a little overpowered and couldn't dump the power from the kite easily. I'll try again on a smaller kite today and see how it goes. Or it cold just be that I need to throw my weight into the turn a bit more. I'll experiment and see what happens.

25 April - Where were you when the dead come walking

Well I'm a little hung over today. I was heading to Quatre Bornes yesterday, which is a nearby town, to see if I could find a something to use as a yoga mat. I had got up in the morning and done some yoga on the tiles in the living room here and realised why people do use mats. I figured I could just tough it out but there are some stuff that is just to painful to do without a bit of padding. So, I was heading to Quatre Bornes and ran into a couple of locals that I have been running into from time to time on the street around where I live. I sat and chatted with them for a bit and ended up drinking rum with them instead of heading into town. As well as all the rum though we had some amazing fresh fish and octopus. I did wake up with a shocker of a headache though, praying to some sort of god that it would go away, but knowing that it wouldn't. Somehow it was gone when I woke in the morning though.. I'm not to sure what to make of that, but I'm pretty thankful. I could be converted. It'd make an interesting conversion story.

“So, how did you find god?”

“Well actually....”

Speaking of god, the wind is forecast to be back tomorrow. Yeehaa! Actually it looks like it was in today, but I'm trying not to think about that to much right now. I'm keen to head out there, get dumped a couple of times and hit those waves properly.

Oh, and I found what looks like a funky cafe that has free wifi here in town. Pretty stoked about that wifi. Going to check it out tonight

OK, a last note. I'm not really sure what I want to say here but I don't want to spend my time hungover. Here or anywhere. Yoga though, man I felt so good after doing a bit of it yesterday morning. That's how I want to spend my time, feeling alive. I was listening to Seth Century's song yesterday morning, Where Were You (When The Dead ComeWalking). It seemed poignant.

23 April - back into it

Well back on the ball today. I resolved the stuff that I needed to last night and went to bed feeling good. I woke up great and had a really good day. Explored the land around that mountain I have been looking at a bit. It turns out, according to a French guy I got a ride from that has been coming here regularly for windsurfing over the past twenty years or so, that the mountain is on private property. Or to be more precise, it was on private property, but is now connected to the UN somehow. I'd love to look it up on Wikipedia but I don't have the internet, and I don't know the name of the mountain. But I could easily find that out if I had the net. So anyway, it's not so easy to climb the mountain. They run tours up there, but they cost a lot and if you try to climb up by yourself they'll try to charge you. So you need to do it quietly. There is one path up there apparently. I'll have to find out where that is and explore it a bit. Quietly. Sometime.

Man, the lagoon where they run the kiting lessons from is pretty amazing. The view is incredible, of the mountains trailing off into the ocean, and the valley where it hints at the river mouth tucked just out of view behind the greenery. Stunning. It would have been a great place to learn too. The water is waist deep I don't know how far out but it must be a couple of hundred meters at least. Steady winds, warm water, protected by the reef from the swell. It'd be a great place to learn all right.

    The beginners lagoon on a quite day. 

It's funny how the two kiting beaches are split so definitely into two groups. There's the beginners beach. And the good guy's beach. Not my words (may not be anyone’s words precisely, but it's pretty close). The landscape does dictate that a bit though. There's not way you would want to be learning in an offshore wind. You could end up in a lot of trouble. And I get why the guy's wanting waves kite at the “good guy's beach” as that's where the waves are. I think it does actually have a name other then “the good guy's beach” by the way, I just don't remember what it is. French names, or which I don't understand the meaning behind the unfamiliar words, are even less likely to stick for me than English names. I guess the flat water trick guy's kite there because they want to be part of the scene. Actually it could be so the beginners don't get in their way, and they don't freak them out too much, now that I come to think of it.

    The lagoon again.

Picked my board up today too. Good as new! And booked tickets to Ireland! Glad the limited internet here got me out of having to search for them. But sorry Mum that you had to do all the online running around. I'll definitely remember how much a pain in the ass that can be, and endeavour to have things booked where I can while I'm at somewhere with reliable, free internet.

Night.

22 April - lonesome

There are times when I like being by my self. That is not tonight. I dropped my board off today to get it repaired. It will be ready by tomorrow night or the morning after. Since then I quickly got on the internet and was able to post the first part of this journal on line and send a link to a couple of people that have expressed interest. Its funny but this journal has become my link to you people, and others that I'm used to seeing day to day back at home. Hi Writing in it feels like connecting to you all. I think I get why people write each other letters now.

 Its been a quite second half of the day. Spent reading and hanging out by my self. I'll have to get the yoga going here. Tomorrow I plan to climb that mountain I've been looking at. We'll see how it goes.

In a garden nearby 

Someone's front yard

21 April

Well, I had my second kiting session today and my first self rescue! I was getting in closer and checking out the waves, riding the tail end of a few just sort of watching where and how they broke when I found the reef. Grrggh, Grrrggh. No harm done I thought, just like yesterday. Until I went for my next turn and the board just slipped out from underneath me, whoomp. Flat on my face. Two fins missing and the fin boxes of one of them ripped. I couldn't hold a line up wind to get back to where I launched so I had to try and ride the top of a small wave across the reef and come back in down wind of the launching beach. Keep in mind here that the break is situated a couple of hundred meters off the south-west corner of the Island with an offshore wind; to both directions of the shore line. So the wind was only going to blow me out to sea.

Anyway, I managed to get enough of an edge on the board to kite towards the shore, downwind of my starting point, but to the shore at least. The problem with this was always going to be that when I got close to this part of the shore line I also got closer to the wind shadow created by the tree's and and hotels downwind of the kiting beach. Naturally when I hit the wind shadow my kite dropped. From here it was just a simple matter of standing up on the reef, pulling my kite in, deflating the leading edge, rolling it up and sitting it on the board, winding the lines and paddling/walking it in the last hundred meters or so. I always wonder about what type of poisonous creatures live in reefs, particularly when I find myself needing to stand on them. By the same token, having a surfboard rather then a twin tip makes dragging it all in to shore a lot easier and the leg rope meant I didn’t have to worry about the board floating off while my attention was on the kite. All in all, a good little exercise. Apparently there is wind forecast for tomorrow morning and then nothing for the next couple of days. So I'll go out on the two fins that I can put in the board and then see about getting it repaired in the next days. Any maybe finally climb that mountain I have been looking at. Man, you've got to see the scenery here form the water, it's pretty spectacular. I'll get some pictures from the gopro at some point.

I've managed to get rides so far either on the bus or from people pulling over and giving me a ride. But the ride home was the best yet today! I Mauritian guy beside a bus stopped me to talk about surfing; he was wanting to get into it. I met came around the other side of the bus and met his family, all thirty of them, had some rum and a big plate of Biryani. Chatted, played some drums badly then got a ride home on the bus with them all. Where the played the dgembe and sung songs all the way to my place. Sweet. I've got to remember to take my camera with me to get some pictures of this stuff

20 April - Testing the water

Started to feel like I was finding my feet here yesterday and had my first taste of kiting here today. I got up early and caught a bus to Founky's place, the board repair guy. The bus ride cost me 28 rupee each way and we negotiated the board to 5500r. I think I can get better at this negotiation thing. Even so, that's an alight price. The board was light, floaty and manoeuvrable. Easy to use really, can turn sharp and is really easy to change feet with. I took it out on the flat water, on the inside of the reef first to get a feel for it. Then went out to one eye to check it out. I was pretty nervous about it at first, but as always getting up closer and having a look at it made it seem less daunting, but it was a small swell apparently. I'm going to pick up a leg rope this arvo so I can go out tomorrow morning and give it a real go. See how it goes hey.

On the down side, things are not quite as cheep here as I had hoped, and it would be really great if this place had internet. As it stands I need to go into a restaurant in La Gaulette after 5 and use their wifi I believe. The way I'm burning through phone credit using the internet is not practicable.

Fingers crossed for an awesome session tomorrow. Oh and I found the reef today! Grrrgh grrgh, a couple of marked up fins. Nothing serious though. The tide comes in by 2pm. Half moon is ok, but you need to watch it on full and no moons I guess? There's a rock in front of the hotel by the kitng beach, if that's covered then it's ok to go out, according to a local windsurfer, so we probably have a bit more leeway on a surfboard.