Santa Cruizin

 

Our very excellent accommodation overlooks the pier, Cowell's Cove and is walking distance to the boardwalk. Score! Above is the view from our terrace.

NAICE!

This is our retro kitchen. The pictures are for you, Jess, as I'm thinking you'll love it. 

Before the mist/fog rolled in!

With our room we managed to score free passes to the boardwalk which proved to be terrific fun. We went on the bumper cars, a few zany rides with lots of lights... I went on the Giant Dipper, a rollercoaster built around 1911. I screamed my lungs out the whole ride.

Bumper cars

Looking like a tourist from... San Clemente??

What's a night at the boardwalk without fairyfloss?

OM NOM NOM NOM NOM!

The highlight of the night was most definitely the Buccaneer Bay Mini Golf!! 18 holes of hilarity! The course had canons going off periodically, pirate animatronics, moving obstacles to get the ball through and even some blacklit, fluorescent holes. Sadly, we both came in around 20 over par. :S

One too many rides on the Tsunami?

 

The next day we checked out the wharf and found some sleek friends.

They are smelly and noisy but very cute. They are very sociable and spent most of the time barking and growling while they all got comfortable lying on each other in the sun.

We found our way over to steamer lane which was pretty serious. I didn't think it was breaking because you can't really see it from our side of the bay. It wraps around the northern point of the bay. With the current swell direction, the guys were taking off into the cliff, so a bit of a critical take off and some agro going around.

 

There was even a kneeboarder out! Serious wavage. A steep take off, a few barrels and a lot of kelp.

 

Young guys timing the cliff jump in between sets.

After finding such serious waves we needed some serious food. We found: pizza the size of my head. So good!

 We then checked out some of the other breaks, south of the main drag. What we found was a lot more chilled out and conducive to a relaxing surf. The Hook, so called because of all the kelp that gets caught in leg ropes and on fins, and Pleasure Point. I'd read about this place in Caught Inside, but didn't know what to expect. It looked pretty nice. Loooong rolling waves. There were even three peaks scattered across the bay the spread people out.

Pleasure Point

Before heading up to Santa Cruz I shot out here for an hour or so. The waves picked up with the incoming tide and the sets were really fun. A nice vibe out in the water and a seal to boot.

The stairs ...

Scored a 9'4 McTavish epoxy for this break and a wetsuit which was 5x4x3mm! That's serious neoprene! Although I think the water was pretty balmy compared to Morro Bay.

The fog which rolled in about 4pm the day before lifted while I was out to reveal the blue sky :) The previous evening, people simply surfed in the fog!

Next stop, San Francisco!!

Lac Marion en Velo

Bon jour!
Well, we have had a busy couple of days!
Yesterday we hired velos (bicycles) and cycled to a big lake with lovely parkland around it. This was a bit of an adventure, what with driving on the right, the non accessible footpaths and lots of one way streets. The real clincher, though, was having to go round a round-a-bout anticlockwise.

Some of the narrow sidewalks even had trees growing in the middle, making cycling even more of a challenge!

After the biggest hill of my life we did get there and spent a lovely midday wondering around and taking photos. In the afternoon we hired boards again (brand new 8'2 NSPs) and headed out for a surf. The conditions were worse than they looked from the beach, but we did manage to catch the window where the onshore conditions glassed off and we had some nice shape for an hour or so as the tide came in. Plus more swell :)
We surfed from 5-7pm and you'd swear it was about 4pm when we got out. So bright here + the daylight savings makes it pretty ridiculous.

Everything happens later here. It gets dark at 10pm. People eat anywhere from 7-11pm. They party til 4, which they can do, because work doesn't start 'til 10am. You can't get breakfast until 10 - when they bring out the tapas and vin for lunch! The first buses are at 10! This morning we had an appointment for a massage and had to get a taxi because we had no other way of making the 'rendez vous' on time.

James on 'le ponton' on Lac Marion

The massage. We both had our first experience with shiatsu today, which was nice, but not as good as a regular one. I espied a Spotlight like fabric store opposite the beauty salon, but when we went to check it out, it was closed from 12-2 for siesta!

After our massages, walking back to the bustop, we went through the shopping mall for the region and discovered... the biggest shop ever!! It's like Coles, Kmart, Liquorland, Retravision, JB hifi and a vaccuum cleaner shop all rolled into one! You can buy whiskey, a cured ham, bikinis, a new mobile and have your bike repaired all in the one shop! Needless to say, we had to run around in there for a while, revelling in the non-village-ness of it all and gushing at the price of bottled water and such like.

No surfing today as the massage has made us feel like we've already had a full work out and it was well and truly stormy with ~15knt onshore winds and rain.
Not very appetising.

This evening instead we chanced upon the night market and found something that was appetising. We gorged ourselves on Indienne!! Pakoras and samosas with spices in them! Washed down with fresh smoothies well and truly did the trick. We have come to appreciate Australia's diverse cuisine. We are just so lucky that on any given night in Perth you can have good Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian, Lebanese, Japanese, African, even French or Greek. Everywhere we have been so far has had a pretty limited menu and no international food to speak of (Save for the hideous Italian in Athens - which we will not speak of). Tonight was the first night we've seen something other than standard, French-Basque fare.

This is a little scary, I know. The depth of field makes it look like blue screen for one. Plus my expression makes me look like something out of Jurassic Park. But would you look at the size of those hydrangeas!!

The park around Lac Marion was divided into different sections with living, growing rooms to explore.

They do have lots of great seafood here, and terrific bread, yummy berries, plus a slightly unhealthy fascination with pork. Last night we had it served three different ways, none of which included 'cooked'. A thin chorizo, serrano, which is like copper, and a third variety, which I think was basically just salty-raw. It's hard to know. They are known for chillies and have a million postcards showing bunches drying from shuttered windows, but none of our meals have been spicy. I am craving garlic and plan to cook  a meal when we get to the hostel in Spain. I only hope that I can buy garlic at el mercado!

The soft option

A few days back we hired out foam boards. We tried to get the bus to Anglet but a guy gave us some bum directions, and by the time we had walked to the local beach we realised that he had misunderstood us and the bus stop was in fact, now twice as far in the opposite direction. So we went out at Cote de Basque instead. The conditions were pretty terrible other than that the sun was shining. Perhaps the smallest day we've had and the tide was super low, so it was shallow - hence the soft boards.

We had a BLAST!

Slow down - Mary Poppins

Someone else's board.

James is a special boy.

Yes, we have matching suits. We're very cute.

Poisson

There was a lot of waiting but it was very pleasant. :) We have been doing things other than surfing. Eating, mainly.

Blue skies and Anglet

We have had an interesting couple of days. Yesterday was a bit lose as it was Sunday and nothing opens on Sunday. We haven't really gotten our head around this though. We tried to book massages but the place was closed, so we went to the history museum which looks to have a cool exhibition on, but that was closed too. So we read our new books. We bought 3 of the 12 english books they had in the shop. So James is reading Cell by Stephen King and I'm reading ... I don't even know the name of it... hang on, The Night Gardener, by the unfortunately named George Pelecanos. It's keeping us off the streets. Unlike the unusual Gentlemen holidaying here who need to let out a long, Neanderthal scream about 4am each morning. We're about ready to head to Spain. :)

Today we went to the massage place on the bus, thinking we could walk in or make an appointment there, and we met the only person so far who hasn't spoken ANY English. This made for a mysterious conversation about rendez vous. After that we caught a different bus (very proud of ourselves) to the beaches in Anglet. Anglet is basically the next suburb north and the beaches are quite different. We were able to hire boards right on the beach for 9 euros for 2 hours! And a wetsuit? 5 euros for two hours. Very very reasonable. The waves were a little bigger here and forming in nice peaks. It was also less crowded, so we had a great time. Still a lot of people at the beach - even some sleeping in sleeping bags! - considering it was threatening to rain the whole time.

Plage de Mirabella, Anglet

A ridiculous amount of sand!

James' last ride was a terrific right that lined up all the way in. Very slick.

Our craft: James' 9' red beast and the 'plank'

Grainy pebble sand

I had the least hydrodynamic surfboard ever created! No rocker to speak of. The thing was plastic with gashes in it and was somewhere around the 8' mark. (All the colour had come off the deck) I don't think it knew what hit it. 
It still gave me some fun rides.

It even had a SMALLER central fin than the two side ones. QUALITY :D

We had a great day out here and will head back before we move on to Spain. We also had a blast on some foamies down at Cote de Basque which I'll pop up in a separate post.

Le surf

Le surf has been petite. Petite petite. But that is what we're here for so I was out there again on Thursday. It was cold, gloomy and onshore. It even rained at one point. Slightly less crowded and there were a few waist high waves when the tide came rushing in and the people went rushing out. James wisely decided to stay dry and, armed with the camera, recorded some of the other things going on on this French Beach...

Lots of sandcastles

This one even has a Granny-flat

There is some terrific beach fashion to be spotted.

Lots of beach tennis, volleyball and skimboarding.

There are always lifeguards on patrol. When the tide comes in they tip their lookout tower over and carry it up the stairs to the road.

They have flags for everything here. Periodically they make PA announcements about something important. Occasionally they bother to do it in English but most of the time I can't tell whether they are saying "Swimmers between the blue flags only" or "Everyone out! There is a shark eating a whale."

There was even some surfing!! Actually, this is Biarritz, there were about 300 people surfing!

Some impressive tandem work!

The 8' South Point I rented.

Still busy even though the surface quality isn't great. That's Spain in the background!

Iconic View - clouds looming