The school offers its students a free pick-up from hotels located in the south-east of Madeira, which I really, really appreciated that day.
After reaching the beach in Machico, it was finally time to squeeze our bodies into the devilish wetsuits… After a traumatic experience of putting on canyoning wetsuits a couple of days earlier, I had quite a trauma … Fortunately, it turned out that surfing suites are much more flexible! What a relief…
There were three of us in total. Me and two other beginners from England. Surfing classes are never too crowded- one instructor can look after up to 5 students at a time.
The lesson began on the beach with an introduction to safety rules and learning the sequence of steps for getting up on a board. All fitness classes with Burpees and Knee to Elbow Push Ups finally came in handy!
Once we perfected that, we were ready to get into the water.
I won’t say it was easy, but I got better with every fall. Childhood karate lessons also helped me jumping into position and somewhere around the tenth attempt, I finally succeeded to stay balanced on board. Somewhere after the twentieth fall, I finally felt like I was surfing… And after the thirtieth fall, I had no energy for the thirty-first one…