Gnarly and Me – Day Four

With the Americans gone and a large school group due to arrive, I have been moved into a room a floor up with a French environmental engineer from Grenoble. He is just one of several odd people that Taghazout seems to attract. Take this English couple, for example, He is an accountant who is also a taekwondo champion and instructor; She, meanwhile, is a Real Fucking Bitch. Looking at them, they’re clearly a bit of a mismatch: the guy looks like an archetypal geek, a bit too tall with thick glasses that insist on sliding down his nose, a receding chin and unfortunate haircut. She’s certainly no stunner, but is definitely disproportionately good-looking compared to Professor Frink.

The gap, then, is filled by her unbearable personality, which presumably has put many other suitors off. While He is genuinely a nice guy, She is so overbearing, so patronising and demanding, that it’s a wonder even the big man can be arsed with her. At breakfast for example, when He asked Her to “chuck him a roll” she literally spiked it in his face. Ho-fucking-ho! How hilarious.

That He takes himself out into the deep water to catch the big waves is no real surprise. And today the waves are very big – as predicted by Magic Seaweed, a large swell has moved into the coast. For the real surfers this is a big deal, for new starts like me, it just makes things a wee bit harder again.

From the moment I start, though, something doesn’t feel quite right. I’m shown a different technique to try and stand up, but it requires me to rock back on my knees. With my new ACL that’s impossible, but I’m not flexible, agile or balanced enough to try the classic surfer “pop”.

Also, working out which leg I should lead with is pretty difficult: naturally my right leg would be stronger, but just six months after cruciate surgery, is it actually stronger than my naturally weak left leg? It’s a conundrum that I don’t really work out for the entire day, instead getting steadily depressed and frustrated by my disability. As we trudge past a group of kids, even my tutor concedes that perhaps it is beyond me .

I’m lying in the sun, wondering why I even bothered to have the surgery in the first place, when a 30-something Kiwi woman asks how I got on today. I begin to tell her, but haven’t long started before she’s shaking her head: six months is too soon, far too soon. Realistically I won’t be able to use my knee without thinking about it for at least a year – she knows, she had it done a few years back and now surfs and snowboards as before. This cheers me greatly and while I get no closer to actually surfing for the rest of the day, now at least I know why I can’t.

Once everyone has had enough at the super-safe Banana Beach, we take a detour via Killer Point to see how the big boys do it. Unsurprisingly, they’re not bad, even though they waves they’re riding look terrifying.

It’s slightly less dramatic at Anchor Point, but this late in the day, most people are happy to spectate and enjoy the view.

Some hours later, I’m back at the hostel and meeting my new room-mates. To add to the overall strangeness of the week, the latest additions to my room are two teenagers from Wales, part of a much larger school group here to spend their half term in the sun. Perhaps I'll take tomorrow off, to rest and avoid being mocked by the fearlessness of youth...