WILD HOME DREAMERS: September 2015

A DAY IN HOSSEGOR: TROUBLES AND WAVES

3:28:00 PM

HARD DAYS ARE COMING

11:28:00 AM

So being on a trip with your car, surfboards and everything, riding around and taking photos of fancy beaches, sunsets and surfers may look like the easiest thing to do, but… it has its small inconveniences. Especially when you don’t have a house, often there is no bed where to sleep at night, no bathroom whenever you need it, no kitchen when you’re sick of eating sandwiches under the rain… You’re always on the go, often spending hours and hours in the car and it’s a real challenge to prepare the simplest lunch when outside it’s only wind and rain… Searching for the best spot for surfing demands a lot of patience and determination, good nerves and excellent navigation system (which we don’t have…) :D Sometimes you just find yourself on a place you’ve never been before, right in the middle of nowhere, not a single person around to ask for directions, and eventually you realize you’re searching for a spot that’s simply not there.

So, right now our mood is slowly becoming more cloudy than sunny, just like the weather. Good waves are still much rare than expected and both of us are a bit disappointed. Either there isn’t enough swell, either there’s too much wind that’s messing the waves, making the ocean look like a bowl of angry smashed potatoes trying to grab the nearest person on the beach and squeeze it to death… brrrrr…. OK, we know we should definitely have more fun, and we’re doing our best - searching for some skate parks when it doesn’t rain or visiting some little towns around the coast… finally some wind and coldness wouldn’t scare us! Lately, most of the fun is when we’re eating cookies, listening to some Otis Redding and dancing like crazy on the car seats :D However we wouldn’t complain about it, since we also have some great days :) The last sunny afternoon was just wonderful: the coast looked like magic – covered with the golden glow of the late afternoon sun. The air was fresh, the ocean was much more calm and the water was reflecting the light on a very particular way, so its surface was sparkling in hundreds shades of blue, purple and even red. Families were walking around, enjoying the beauty of the last summer days. Surfers were preparing to enter the water, waiting for the perfect tide level.

The surf session started just before the sun began its evening journey to the horizon… Unfortunately the waves were rare and small, often closeouts. Few surfers left the water, but they stayed around, enchanted by the magic light of the sunset. The view was splendid: the complexity of colors and reflections was tiring our eyes, but it was also attracting us with some strange, inexplicable power… You can never understand nature and its secrets, and the feeling of being there, watching the magical arrival of the night reminded us how big and beautiful is the world and how small and insignificant our worries and troubles could be…

basque country

A week in sunny Spain: basque country and more...

5:25:00 PM

Hello friends! We are back on the road! After a really pleasant one week stay in San Sebastian, yesterday we left north, crossed the Spanish border and got back to France. We spent the afternoon checking the surf spots all over the road to Biarritz. Even though we’re still in the Basque region, it feels kind a different than its Spanish part. We so very much loved Donostia !

View at the Donostia / San Sebastian bay from our balcony

Our first touch with the Basques made us like and respects them. All the people we’ve met were very happy and proud with their Basque origins. We’ve seen a funny example during a joyful celebration in the town of Zarautz. The place was full of locals wearing some special costumes, even the small babies were dressed up. We spent the day there: skating, swimming, or just walking around and it was great fun. Some people were enjoying the nice weather on the beach, some were doing grocery shopping and some were drinking coffee on the fancy beach walk. But they were all in costumes! For a second you would feel like everyone is taking part on some strange play… As the skate park was on a popular spot, just next to the beach we were expecting some crazy costume skater to show up and blow us up with some tricks, but sadly no one came :D

So, during our week in San Sebastian we’ve heard lots of stories about how strong and tough are the men, and how pride and out of reach are the women. We couldn’t verify that, but we definitely noticed lots of men and women just having fun! Those people are always out! Every evening the local cafés are full, as well as the bars, restaurants event the benches in front of the houses in the small village of Mundaka. Old men telling stories about the ocean, young ladies drinking non alcoholic beer and fighting with snacks…

With us people were all friendly and welcoming, generous and always ready to share some stories (or myths…) about their culture. We were meeting around few glasses of local wine or beer and lots of pinchos (something like an equivalent of tapas, but based on meat or fish, sometimes in small bread, sometimes mixed with potatoes and vegetables). Finally locals looked like they really enjoyed sports, especially surfing. Sadly there were some waves just once, but on that evening the beaches were full with surfers. Hundreds of them, all ages and types, coming after work (or school), hoping to catch few waves before dinner.

Even the smallest waves can be fun...

Evening at the beach

There’s no point talking about the clean, light blue waters, the golden sand, the green hills and spectacular cliffs, surrounding the picturesque villages and splendid towns. But if we have to synthesize the whole impression – it’s just the good life!

For this lovely week - special thanks to our awesome host Jordan. Our goal for the next few days is to find the best spots for surfing around Saint Jean de Luz, Bidart, Barritz, Anglet, Capbretton and even Hossegor. For now it looks pretty promising :)

Beautiful closeout before the evening storm at Anglet

Take care and follow us on the social networks for more pics and updates :)

basque

Having fun in the Basque country

1:02:00 PM

adventure

Life on the road... so far

6:57:00 PM

Hello friends! How are you? We are GOOD. It’s the seventh day of our journey and it’s the first time we can stop for a while and share some news. (Finally a real wifi connection!) Days are really crazy, sometimes we’re just having good time, but often enough we get insane over some GPS location or on which exit should we take at the next roundabout. We started with a pretty bad trip trough Serbia, that took all us all day and a loooot of car pushing. Serbian police officers were waiting with opened arms, straight at the border asking for some money under the table (“That’s our dad’s car? Oh no, my friend, you cannot drive this one in Serbia. You need special permission, lots of paper work, you know.”) “Happily” few cigarette boxes were enough for our greedy neighbors... Normally crossing the country should not take long but we had the chance to enjoy kilometers of traffic jams and share hours and hours of pleasant moments with thousands of nervous drivers, their kids, dogs, noisy cars and noisy women. At sunset, just before the Croatian border we simply turned off the engine and got off our ride. Everything was moving sooo slow that we were just circling around the car and pushing in it from time to time in order to gain few more meters. We were only dreaming of Croatia, but honestly after we finally managed to cross the border we just felt asleep. Such a loooong day in Serbia. Next morning we woke up in Croatia. That country is such a beautiful place, with good and friendly people, that smile at you event in the hotness of the summer holidays month. Driving was pretty chilled out, so we took the time to see some nice places such as Zagreb and Rijeka, but also some cool mountain villages. After the horrible time in Serbia we decided we deserve some fun in the sun and went to the Krk Island. The time we spent there was just awesome. Honestly whole Croatia was pretty amazing… Hvala Hrvati! Finally one evening we crossed the border and had a magical ride trough wonderful Slovenia. We’ll tell you more about those experiences, and we definitely have lots of things to share for our stay in Italy. That country brought us so much sun, beauty and awful lot of girls properly dressed (or should we say undressed) for the summer. However, right now we finally got to France trough the Alpes and we intend to enjoy the fresh melons we just bought from a Province village…

Please enjoy those few photos we share, we promise to write some more detailed posts for the cool places we visited so far.

P.S. The Ocean still looks faaar away…