My surfing journey

Since childhood, I was addicted to two things: water and adrenaline. Because I was born far away from the ocean coast, I couldn’t experience beautiful life around the water as much as would desire. I was a natural swimmer though, learning how to behave in the liquid medium very early in my life and enjoying it a lot. For the adrenaline part, I was leaning toward extreme sports, specifically aggressive inline skating. For a very long time, I risked my knees and elbows on halfpipes and while sliding rails next to the stairs. That gave me a good kick and helped me go through the days. This was good enough until for the first time I experienced the power of the ocean in my early 20’s.

During my student exchange, we decided to travel to Morrocco. We did that mostly because the flight tickets were super cheap and it seemed pretty exotic to visit Africa. While exploring Marakesh I looked up the map and realized we can actually see the ocean if we take a bus and travel a few hundred kilometers to the west. Sounded like a great idea so without much thinking we were sitting in a local bus that took us to the shore. I remember it was a winter stormy day and I saw the waves breaking on the sand everywhere. We were walking next to the beach and I saw a surf school somewhere in between the shops. That was enough to hop into a wetsuit and jump straight into the water in between the mess. It was January, stormy, and pretty cold so I was obviously the only one that was enjoying a swim but it definitely didn’t destroy my fun. Not knowing what to do I was catching, or rather was caught by the whitewash and was dragged to the shore. I believe I was pretty lucky since my knowledge about the rips was close to zero and I don’t remember any lifeguards around there. Anyway, I survived and this is where my surf addiction begins. A perfect combination in between staying in the water and the adrenaline kick when there is a bigger set coming through and… technically the hardest thing I’ve ever tried.

Since then I knew I wanted to learn how to surf and this is the moment I decided to make effort to be around the ocean as much as I can. Australia seemed like a perfect place to go to and since it was even more exotic to me at that time than any other place in the world, it became my next goal. It took me few years and some hard work but finally, I landed in Sydney and moved to the only surfing beach that I knew at that time that was Bondi. Here I bought a surfboard, that had enough volume to carry my inexperienced body and started to play with the waves. I was standing on the board pretty quickly but obviously, I was far from knowing how to surf, although I didn’t know it. I enjoyed every minute in the water and the whitewash pushes. Finally, during one of the sessions in Tamarama, I remember my first open wave. I remember, by luck, being in the right position, going down the wave, standing up, and looking in front of me into the unbroken wave. I remember looking back and seeing the pocket following me and the smoothness of the movement. That feeling I remembered since then and this is what pushes me toward surfing. Very likely my first open wave was a bit more clumsy than I remember it but in my mind, it was a smooth, open, magazine-type of a wave.

So that was obvious I won’t give up on surfing. After a while, I came back from Australia and since then I have kept looking for a chance to surf. Through organized trips to France, my own surf adventures in Portugal and Morroco to finally finding my way back to Australia where I can play with the waves almost every day at Maroubra. Even though it has been already almost a decade since I fell in love with surfing I am sure it is just the beginning of the journey and I am looking forward to learning how to rip and hopefully one day get barrelled.