Welcome back to the grinder 🙂

So after getting on a plane in Greece, returning to Slovenia for 24 hours and getting on another plane from Venice I landed with my evil twin on midnight in Lisbon and Sara, my gorgeous portugese Munich exchange friends and her oh so lovely sister Mariane picked us up after a day of sweating in Venice at 38 degrees and a easy jet checkin marathon. First thing we did in Lisbon after landing was to get a few Belem cookies 😉 my absolute favourite.

Next morning we headed out to Caldas da Rainha by bus where Simone and Leni picked us up and soon we were in Foz do Arelho. Our place to stay. Thnx to fellow photographer Miha Godec we found this cheap place so we had enough cash left to get a rental car. For the cash we payed I was expecting a wreck but we got a new Ford Focus… just enough space for a few boards and a ton of sand 😛 

Then of course the first thing was to get into the water with my trusted board. It has a name now… KIBA 😛 After almost two years of injury related absence from wavesurfing it felt really good to be in the water again. I did catch a few waves and getting on to the linup was no problem. Also added to that Foz is a really nice spot on our little blue earth 😉 I actually prefer it to crowded Peniche. But still that one is better for beginners.

The girls going in 😛

Next day, After checking the local 58surfstore where you can get anything (trusters and shortboards in heaps of all shapes and sizes new or 2nd hand)the girls got there boards and we just needed a board for my twin. And we found it a day later… finally… A nice 6.4 qs 2nd hand truster fish by Mark Phillips.

The Quiksilver board in our tidy apartnment

It`s gonna take some time for my twin to get used to something that prestine but it should cover his transition.. after all, after a week there was improvement to be seen XD. 

Riding Baleal that day was superflat so it wasn`t to interestig. We did meet our Tribu surf school friends at the beach and I was looking forward to a few days of fun getting back into shape 😉 Swell was supposed to pick up on the next day thou so I hoped to ride a few good waves… hell I really miss this already after beeing home for 2 weeks… and specially having the opportunity to ride with our friends, Marko, Miha, Janina and the Mrge from the Surfcamp.

Baleal can be a crowded place …

To many people on one wave …

I do like the long beach at Penich all the way up to Baleal but to be honest if swell is bad there is only one good point at the end of the beach and everyone is there. I remember this kind of stress from Kuta beach back on Bali, and I don`t like it. The Portuguese locals might not be as bad as the Australians but sometimes you can get into trouble … We did surf at that beach for most of the time since it`s a good fit for all. And the two best days were at that spot to 😛

Generally the swell conditions were actually really bad. Of the two weeks only 4 days had proper conditions. Most of the time it was very small, but good to get once basic skills into shape after that much absence.

After a few days we went south .. where you may ask ? Well that you will find out in the next post 😛