Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
We are coming to a close on our Tobago holiday. It's been fantastic but also fleeting. A week is clearly not enough. We have enjoyed seeing the Argyle waterfalls of the island, swimming and jumping into them, as well as 'trekking' through the rainforest where our mum got chased by a very large and very angry fresh water crab. We have been sunburnt and tanned, some more than others (mainly John) and some even have head injuries after a bit too much rough pool time antics (John again.) In fact it's safe to say, and we might as well just say it, that John is pretty much coming back looking more worse for where than like he's just had a relaxing Caribbean holiday.
Today was our last full day so having found out at the beginning of the week that we could surf, there was no way we could pass the opportunity up. Today was our final chance. So after our parents plus Becky went to go on their own tour of the cocoa plantation, Joe, Isaac, John, Laura and myself set off to mount irvine bay.
We came to check the bay out at the beginning of the week and were told that we had to speak to a guy named George who ran the surf lessons. We found George near the collection of surf boards propped up by the tree. He seemed like a very friendly, happy Rastafarian Caribbean man who was eager to show us what to do and give us some tips on how to pop up on the board and position etc. We had to wait an hour before we could go in as the waves were not great at that particular point in time, so we sat down. Near to us were a family from Trinidad barbecuing fish and listening to another man play some blues on his guitar. They invited us over to join them so we had some pretty good entertainment until it was our time to go and surf.
So after an hour we picked up our boards and paddled into the sea. Once we were out, George with us too, he gave us pointers as to what we should do. We had to position ourselves in front of a mango tree (and from the amount he went on I shall never forget this mango tree) then came the first persons turn.
All of a sudden this happy, chilled out Rastafarian man became this angry, stressed out beast. When it came to each of our turns he just screamed different commands at us and if we didn't get it quite right this would quite clearly infuriate him and cause him to say things to us like "oh my god! I can't trust you guys to be in the water by yourselves! You would not be able to do anything! You're so bad at this!"....not the enjoyable holiday surfing experience you would expect.
It didn't stop there. I know that some of us are not prone to becoming very distressed by others, however I believe when he was yelling angrily at Joe to 'hurry up! Spin your board! Paddle! Paddle! No, relax! Relax! I said relaaax!!' I could see Joe getting agitated and shouting back 'I'm trying to relax!!!'
It really did start to feel like he didn't much like us anymore and therefore it was sucking just a little bit of the pleasure out of it. We obviously had upset him with our lack of skill.
The turning point came when we managed to succeed in riding a few good waves. This must've brought him great pleasure and now he was our friend again; the happy Rastafarian we came to know was back.
We rode a few waves each and John even managed to stand and ride a little. Impressive considering it was his first time ever. He did come out a little more battered though than the rest of us. The sea was lovely and the location looked beautiful, with coral all along the bottom which was amazing. However that did mean you had to be careful of it and I can imagine that is why John ended up with extra cuts on his feet.
We did have fun in the waves and it was nice that it was only us in there for a while. The only other person who came was an old French man with long dread locks but bald on top, but he didn't arrive till we were nearly done.
So now it's our final night here, that makes me very sad. I feel like we only just arrived. I will miss waking up to the beautiful ocean and the turtle beach. I will miss the very laid back staff and general relaxed attitude of the island people, as well as the free cocktails of course. I will even miss the three fat ladies who get up very early for breakfast every single morning and then run (figuratively, not literally) to their favourite spot by the pool and sit there the entire day. Even when a torrential downpour came.
But it's probably true to say that if we stayed any longer then we would end up like these three fat ladies; very, very large and so tanned it's just not funny anymore.
We still have the morning tomorrow, but Tobago, it's been great!
- comments