After 12 epic days for surfing, the inevitable, days for resting has come about. But despite the fact that we were all surfing our hearths out in these past days , we managed to find some enegry to make some fun waves even on that rainy flat and cold day at Surf House Portugal in November 2012 . . .
Continue reading Tarp Surfing Tubes On Flat Rainy Days
After the whole week of not being able to surf good waves, the ending was truly perfect surfing experience. This whole week I was only able to surf 2 times, as it was rainy, windy, messy waves and cold weather. I only did it 2 times at Bruno’s Place at the Baleal Beach in Peniche, but there was about a hundred surfers beside me also catching waves.
Continue reading Deep Soul-sation
As it has became a kind of a tradition of the Ypsilon Institute, we were off to the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia, to the city of Opuzen by the Delta of Neretva river.
It has been our base city and from there we drove to the nearby Kite-boarding surf spot, managed by Kaikala Kite-surf school. Other than kite-surfing, relaxing, enjoying the trully local food and meeting genuinely good hearted local people, there is not much to do here.
Five years ago nobody even knew about this breathtaking place, it was just a beautiful area to drive-by from Split to Dubrovnik. And we can only thank Ivica Odak, Domen Simčič and Soni Makarovič from Kaikala Kite-surf school for discovering a perfect kite-surfing playground by the delta of the river Neretva and consequently this marvelous, untouched area of Croatian coast, where you can still feel the pleasant, welcoming, cheerful and relaxed local vibe. Falling in love with this Ploče, Blace, Metković and Opuzen area.
This is definitely the main attraction of the area. There is a place of the coast near Blace, where most of the afternoons are blessed with a steady 15 – 30 knots winds. Perfect for kite-surfing. What’s more, the water in the area of the Neretva river delta is very shallow in large areas, which makes learning kite-surfing a lot more easier, safer and definitely more fun.
For more information about the kite-surfing spot you can check out the Kaikala Kite-surfing school, who own this place at www.kaikala.eu. Really nice people, good vibe. But . . . all truly stoked people are like that 😉
We made a lot of progress in managing the powerful winds in our kites. The instructors are very attentive and the progress with them seems like a piece of cake. In my opinion, the whole things is too much on the safe side . . . for an adrenaline sport. But you have to know, that I am no authority in safety whatsoever. I mostly learn the most from failing. Like a bouncing ball. The harder you smash it to the ground, the higher it will bounce back up. Sure, I sometimes get hurt, but it takes learning to new highs much, much faster.
We were doing the beginner kite-surfing exercises.
On the last day, we even got the kite with full size lines. For the first days we had kites with the half-sized lines, as it is much more easier to manage the kite and thus more appropriate for beginners. We were a day short to be able to try out the kite and the board together. But there’s no hurry. We’ll be back to Kaikala soon, to master the powerful winds of Dalmatia.
When I discovered we will be sleeping in a hotel, I was not the most excited about the fact. In this area I would rather be in a private accommodation. But that was just based on my previous experience of hotels. This one is much much different. It’s a small, family owned motel, Motel Delta by the river Neretva in the center of Opuzen. The rooms are coasy and air-conditioned. Each has a pleasant view of the river. Everything is tidy and clean.
There is a bar down stairs where the local people are hanging out. And it’s so lovely to get to know the local people. It makes you feel the vibe of the place on a much deeper level. Everything is so relaxed here. Really pleasant. We came up with one version of good, better, the best. In Croatian language it goes like Opušten, Opušen, Opuzen (eng: Chilled, relaxed, Opuzen (the city)) And it really is like this. Just a lovely, friendly vibe.
Just about everything you can eat in these small restaurants here is local, fresh and very tasty. We had a diner one evening at Konoba na Kantini, which you can find in the center of Opuzen, behind the main church on the left side. It’s a small place with only two tables. They severe only fresh and freshly prepared food and to eat there you have to make an appointment a day before. But the food was just spectacular. I think that dinner was the most tasty sea food I have ever eaten so far.
The first dish was Cuttlefish Risotto, which is a specialty in this place. They put the ink of the fish in it and that’s why the color of it is completely black. Really tasty. After that we had grilled shrimps with mandarin honey. That was just an endless sensation of pleasurable tastes in our mouths.
It was a complete enjoyable experience in the very locally furnished interior, to enhance the pleasurable feelings of the food. Absolutely perfect.
Opuzen is a nice dalmatian coastal city by the delta of the Neretva river. It has a nice, small main square with the mini church and the City hall. There is also a lot of local bars and restaurants to be found there.
It’s probably not the nicest place you can find in Croatia, but it’s the kind of place, where you can feel the true, loving local vibe in the middle of the summer and not the tourist vibe. And that makes it special in a unique kind of way.
The prices here are also local. For example I paid something like 2,5 EUR for a hot-dog and a 0,5L Coca-cola on the beach. While a friend of mine paid 2 Eur for just a 0,25L Coca-cola in Korčula, a well known Croatian Island.
It’s a spectacularly, breathtaking area. The Neretva river with it’s delta made a huge fertile flatlands, embraced by the high, steep rocky mountains. The Delta area has a very fertile soil, and in combination with Mediterranean warm year-round climate, the area produces a lot of tasty fruits and vegetables. I’m quite sure here are the sweetest fruits I have ever tried in my life. And not just the tree fruits 😉
On our way to the gas station in Metković one evening we drove by one hill fort not far away from the main road. And we decided we are going to stop there on our way back to Opuzen.
When we came up the fort, called “Fortica” (eng: small fort) we met a guy named Pero, who is a fire guard in the fort. In the hot and dry summer months, there is a huge probability of natural fires, so they put up fire guards to response faster in the case of a natural fire emergency.
We asked Pero, which royal family was the owner of this Castle, Fort. He just smiled and said: “Gusari S Neretve” (Pirates of Neretva). Was quite funny. But it would be interesting to know, what the pirates were doing in this area. This question is to be answered clearly on my next visit. But for now it seems, they too have fallen in love with the place.
It’s just amazingly beautiful.
Even tough Opuzen is a small city, there was events happening every day. One day they had a concert with rock and punk music by the river. They had an event for the Christian Holiday, August 15., a cultural event and a week long film festival, called Opuzen Film Festival, OFF. In the promotional catalog, one picture in particular captured my attention.
It said: One world, One Struggle (Hr: Jedan Svet, Jedna Borba)
To me, it has quite a uniting meaning.
Another night there was a concert evening of the Folk music singer, called Klape. Its quite spectacular what can be created just by using the voice.
And the late evenings, we spend hanging out a the Kaikala surf spot or at Azzuro bar in Blace, where most of the Kite-surfers are going.
All in all was a completley perfect kite surfing trip. And Opuzen, I’m coming back for sure.
They say it’s the people that make the place amazing. And the vibe in Opuzen is just about right Opušten (eng: relaxed) to be able to enjoy this completely.
Aloha
On Saturday afternoon, my friend Domen came to Bled to have an extended (3 hours) paddle training surf session at lake Bled. I do it almost daily on this spot and the sights of magnificent lake of Bled are just amazing from the water surf point of view. With the island with the church in the middle and the castle on the rock above it, it just sounds too dreamy to be true . . .
Our friend Ažbe borrowed us his GoPro water sports camera, which we placed on the nose of a surfboard and off we were to an extra long paddle training session at Lake Bled.
It’s true we were paddling for three hours, but this time with GoPro camera, it was so much fun. As almost as there would be surfable waves at lake Bled at that day. Well, maybe not so much fun, but still a lot better than just paddling. 🙂
A small disadvantage of the GoPro camera is, that it dosen’t have any kind of display which would let you know, what you are recording or photographing. But this is not a big problem, as it has a super wide-angle lens. Before using it, I was worried about not getting the things I want to record in the lens line of sight. But after seeing the pictures and movies it made . . . now I know, I only have to be careful, to hide unwanted things from the GoPro super wide-lens. For example, the duck tape on the surf board 🙂
There was a lot of people on rented boats going to the Bled Island, so we were experiencing some heavy boat traffic around the water around us. Despite the crowd, we manged to find open fields of water, without the boats constantly “dropping in the good soul waves” and record some awesome videos of Lake Surfing @ lake Bled.
The underwater , duck dive and over paddle scenes are just blended beautifully with the dreamy song Porcelain, produced by Moby.
Enjoy watching Deep Soul Surfing @ Lake Bled
Aloha
Supertubos surf spot, between Conscolescao and Peniche in Portugal is the most amazing wave i have met in person, so far. It’s a short break wave, that break heavy and super fast onto a very shallow water on a sandy bottom shore. It’s a steep, fast, tube making and super awesome wave . . . Supertubos.
Ever since we were on a Rip Curl PRO Portugal, ASF World Tour event in October 2011 and saw the wave experts take on those 4-5 meter monsters, I is my wish to surf it too. Much smaller swell tough 😉
Supertubos is a world known wave and there is a lot of locals surfing it on a good wave day. A lot of really skilled surfers and bodyboarders in the water on such days. Definitely not the time for a first-time Supertubos master-in-training to be at that place.
So, we decided with my friend, a very skilled body boarder, Diego, that on every early morning when the Supertubos will be working, we will wake up early and beat the pro crowd, to be be able to learn the wave.
We’ve got our first chance on a Saturday June 2nd, 2012. The forecast for that day was 2.5 to 3 meter swell with crosss-offshhore winds. Perfect conditions for Supertubos. We woke up at 6 am and drove to the Supertubos, which is located about 5 minutes from our surf house Tribu.
At 6:30 a, as I was entering the massive breaking waves, I saw Diego, already riding his first super tube of the day. Just an great morning sight, to see your friend in the Barrel fro the side. It was just great motivation to make 2 epic, late duck dives to get to the line up. A plus side of this surf spot is, that you are able to get to the line-up really fast. Only one or two duck dives. But these duck dives, phuuuu!! When you make it the lip smashes on your feet, launching you through the other side of the breaking wave.
I was very brave to take on the first wave, as it seemed so easy when Diego was doing it. I paddle on the wave, want to make a stand-up and the next moment I was falling, smashed the bottom and find myself almost on the shore. Auch. I waited for the set to pass and get to line up again. This time I was afraid. I was just floating in the line-up watching some 6 really good surfer taking on the waves. It was cool vibe in the line-up. We all respected each other, a real surfing spirit on that morning.
I took on the second wave, same story and the third one as well. But at my first try I really got smashed hard with my ass to the sandy bottom. I was really thinking about exiting the water. “But, man! You woke up at 6 am, put on the wetsuit and you are in the water. There is tubes like 5 meters away from you. What kind of a man is giving up after only 3 wipe-outs.” Just turn around and go again. This time I didn’t hesitate. I took the first wave that offered it self. I paddled hard and made a stand up!! WOoooooooo, I’m surfing on Supertubos!!
BUT! The nose of the board started sinking, maybe the wave was too steep for the board, as I was unable to get the nose over water, and the next moment I was falling to the sandy bottom again. This time hitting it directly with my back. I swear, it was like one giant’s hand smashing and pressing you to the bottom. It didn’t hurt at all at that moment, but sure did feel the pain the whole week after.
I kind of felt like this penguin guy, Cody Maverick from the surfing cartoon Surf’s Up. And my friends told me, that my Supertubos surfing looked like this 😉
I was totally stoked, and also covered in sticky sand under my wetsuit when we got back to the van. I was telling to my friends, how happy I am, that after 4 heavy wipe outs the board is still in one piece. I put the board in the board bag and put behind the van.We were having fun talking about waves, changed our clothes and drive the van forward from the parking, to return to the Tribu Surf House with Diego and Marina. On our way, a car started driving behind us, blending lights and honking the horn. Diego thought that there is something wrong with the tires of the van. But everything was fine, we just thought one happy camper is still in action from Friday night. Than he drove parallel to us, pointing to a surfboard he has in his car. I showed him thumbs up, thinking: “Ye, cool guy, you have s surfboard to.” And than . . . I look back, and my surfboard is missing in the van. OMFG!!! The guy has my surfboard.
We stopped on one side road and this guy Mark from South Africa (we’ve met in the following days on some surf sessions ), saw when we drove off and the board fell on the ground behind the van. I am so thankful that such a nice person saw this event, that he drove after us with my board. What a guy.
So this day was a triple lucky day in the beginning already. I’ve got 4 wipe-outs and was still in one piece. So was the board. And I accidentally re-found my surfboard, thanks to the South African surf Spirit. Thank you Mark.
And thank you . . . God? That I didn’t drive in reverse from the parking. Even Mark wouldn’t been able to help me in the case of driving the van over my board . . .
Later on that day we’ve got 4 more really nice surf sessions on Baleal beach with mini-malibu boards. Was so much fun.
And soon, I will take the teachings of the Supertubos wave, with added experience, skill and strength to master this monster that has overmastered me on this day.
You can only loose in any situation, when you give up. I don’t know, how really great must it be, to actually be standing on a surfboard, surrounded by nothing but a tunnel of ocean water and moving along it as it disappears behind you and appears in front of you . .
And no wipe-out, I don’t care how hard and pianful it might be, can ever stop me from getting what I desire in any area of life.
Supertubos, you are no exception.
Aloha
A Deep Soul Thanks to Sarah, for nominating Deep Soul Surfer with this lovely award on her blog.
As I receive this award I am sharing 7 Deep Soul Truths about me.
And my nominies are:
Thank you for your blogs. Enjoying them post by post.
The fine print:
When you each receive this notification do the following:
1) Identify this award, thank the person who nominated you and post a link to their blog.
2) Post the logo for the award on your page.
3) List seven things about yourself
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This moment was captured in time in July 2009, at the Triglav Mountain, Slovenia.
This picture has a strong symbolic and metaphoric meaning in my social life. It’s representing our human ability to see trough people defenses and facades they put up to show them selves in a certain light. This picture a clear image of my developing ability to see people in their true self, personality activity process.
The more this skill develops, the more I begin to uncover that mostly when the outside rock of people’s personality breaks open . . . there’s just nothing there. Sheer empty space of antimatter. A matter consuming activity, with a black hole in the middle, that sucks on every bits of mater around it.
I am thankful for this ability, as it allows me to find great sights of personality activity people, which I truly admire, respect and love, and to avoid the antimatter people. Now, the tricky part is that the difference between matter and antimatter is really small.
Basically it the same material, but with opposite charge and quantum spin to the particles. And just sometimes, some people can still get bits and pieces of my matter in their hole of black, covered in beautiful, shining lime stone.
The black holes have a natural tendency to consume and all bits of matter and turn it into and empty antimatter. People do that, because they are too lazy or unable to create their own matter.
So when the window opens and there is beautiful sights to be seen on the inside. Now, to find this kind of sights, you first need to open your soul completely, explore lots and lots of rocks and make windows trough them in the right place . . .
But when you begin to discover the beautiful soul . . . It’s the most truly happy moments of my life as I can remember.
Some people, still are good. Most people in my world are. But this picture of the world is, as it seems, a different, sad story.
On a hot Saturday morning I picked up Živa in Ljubljana to spend a day together, exploring a valley in the north-east part of Slovenia, called Logarska Dolina. We took a local road trough the hills on the way there instead of the motorway. It’s much more relaxing to drive on those roads. And on the way there we passed one place called “Hudo”. We have this slang expression in our, Slovenian language “Čist Hudo” and we use it as “Top Shit” expression is used in English. That was kind of an morning introduction in to a really” Top Shit” day.
We drove on this scenic road trough Kamnik and Gornji Grad to reach Solčava. There is the entry to this Valley of Logarska Dolina. There is lots of natural and cultural landmarks to be found in this flat fields of green grass and trees, embraced by the mighty steep rock walls. Quite an enchanting place with a lot to offer to satisfy your soul.
You can find complete information about this destination on this link about Logarska Dolina.
Obviously there is too much to see in one day. So we just decided to head up into Logarska Dolina, with our destination to see Slap Rinka and use our senses and feelings to guide us to the other great things on the way trough the valley. There is an entrance fee to pay to enter the valley and it includes all parking fees and attraction visits. Seven Euros per car is quite a fair price for such beauty.
We were both hungry after the drive, so the first thing on our find list was some nice, local place to eat. We found it on the “Cross Roads” (si: Razpotje). We had nice fresh Postrv fish. The full launch meal was 9 Eur / person. A really fair price, for such a tasty treat.
After that great meal, we were both ready to take a midday nap. We drove up, to the end of the valley, where is the start of the walking path to reach the Rinka Waterfal. We found a perfect place to rest, relax, digest and reconnect by taking a nap in the shadow of a huge stone block of a dry river channel. The ground was quite flat from the floating water and the stones gave a coasy rock pillow. And while napping that song:
“Talking Blues” was playing on the iPhone.
Cold ground was my bed last night,
and the rock, was my pillow too.
The lyrics go quite good with the situation we’ve gotten our selves into. And we also remembered about the funny “Jamaican Tour Guide” video on YouTube about this Bob Marley‘s Pillow, where he wrote the song “Talking Blues”.
We were soon ready to explore the area deeper, to the end, to reach the Rinka waterfall. The completely dry river channel was a much more tempting way to go to reach the waterfall. We hadn’t had any shoes on our feet the whole way and it was so much fun to jump from one rock boulder to another.
Soon this amazing cottage, Eagle’s nest appeared around the corner. It’s placed high in the rock above the ground, overlooking the magnificent Rinka waterfall. Was just a coupple of rock jumps and we could see this amazing beauty of nature.
The way to there was just hot enough to take a refreshing summer shower under the waterfall. Although the water falls to the small lake blow from 90 meters, it is possible to stand under it as the water is slowed down on it’s way to the ground by a huge block of lime stone under it.
The funny thing about this waterfall is, that there is not a lot of water flowing over it and it is so high, that the water drops become so small and light that the wind is actually moving the whole waterfall by 10 meters on each side.
We had coffee at the Eagles nest with an middle aged Dutch couple, who were camper traveling Slovenia. They were the most cool people we’ve met the whole trip. We’ve had fun exchanging some experience with camping traveling around. Really nice people.
On our pleasurable shoeless way down the “main path” we had a feeling we are from another planet as almost every by-passer looked at us that way. Nevertheless, walking barefoot is the most freeing experience for me. And the different terrain gives different kind of sensations which spread from the feet throughout the whole body. Love this feeling.
The whole way down, we were both truly excited about visiting this place, The Fairytale Forest. Just the name is so exciting that evokes the child in every soul. Although in my soul, that child never seems to sleep anyway. 😉
It’s quite a nice place with the wooden sculptural representations of the local and international fairy tales scenes. A really nice forest to be in. We were actually lucky, that we could get in as the forest was already closed. But we managed to get the manager to let us in to check it out. And it was actually a much better experience to be there just the two of us, without anybody to disturb the pure enchanting feeling of the fairytale forest.
The valley was getting darker and darker and after eating pancakes at the Fairytale Forest,
we drove to the entrance of the valley to catch the final bits of light and have a final relax under Logar’s Linden, before the ride home.
It was a truly nice day, one that definitely decided whats meant, or not to be. Živa was driving home, as I was completely exhausted from a busy working week. Although she is a “beginner driver” I can trust her ability to make the right decision for the road in front of us. So I was able to relax completely and enjoy the ride the whole way, for the ending of just another amazing day.
Trip to Liepaja, was our first weekend trip of our Erasmus exchange studies in Latvia. It was organized by the lovely team of students from ESN Riga.
After arriving in the city, we first had a short tour around the city. It’s a small but nice city on the southern coast of Latvia.
The most interesting building of it is the church. We decided to take a tour of it and climb the tower to take a panoramic view of the city. Well we almost got a panoramic view of the whole country, as you can see really far, because it is a total flat-terrain country.
Our Bus than drove us to the Karosta Prison Area. It’s a huge complex of a living area, for the prison employees and soldiers, a huge defense system for the former outside western border of The Soviet Union and the most guarded prisons in the world.
The ampartment building area looks terrible today. Well, maybe even in it’s best times, it wasn’t some landmark area. Now it’s just this huge abandoned blocks of concrete, standing the tests of time.
But in every place you can find some truly amazing beauty. In the center of this area is a magnificent Russian Cathedral. In the best days of this area it was used for social gatherings and even as a movie theater, for the soldiers, employees of the prison and their families.
We arrived to our meeting point to play a team building spy game: “Escape from the U.S.S.R.” This prison is already over 100 years old. In the operating day of the prison no-one managed to escape. And it’s the only such high security military prison in the world.
The game was quite serious as there were a lot of Soviet guards paroling the area. We had a map and our task list to accomplish our mission and meet our friend’s escape boat at the sea to escape from the grasp of the Soviets.
We had a lot of obstacles on our way. Runing fastly trough the open areas, crawling in the tight, dark channels of abandoned defense structures, climbing the tree structures, using gas masks and night vision goggles and for the finish wire-sliding over a small river to reach to coast of freedom.
After every one escaped from the Soviet Grasp, we enjoyed our freedom on the beach while the sun was sinking into the Baltic sea . . .
And than took a satisfied, relaxing walk back to the bus. Was a really fun game to play and it was just a breathtaking enviroment. The good side of this military base being here for more than 100 years is that the natural enviroment is almost untouched. If you don’t mind the military structures.
We went to have dinner at a restaurant and than to the hostel to get ready to have a great erasmus party with people form all corners of Europe. Was a really amazing party till the morning. Really nice people.
The next day on Sunday . . . all we were able to do is get our selves somehow to the beach and just enjoy a beautiful warm sunny day in the north of Europe at the end of September. It was also the first time for me to swim in the northern Baltic Sea. Was just a perfect day, perfect weekend, with perfect company of relaxed, good-hearted people.
A day full of fun and laughter.
Love this day.
Sweet summer napping . . .
Deep Soul Surfer 