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Published: October 13th 2010
I went down on the back of a friend's motorbike to meet the surfers at a bay a few hours away, called Riyuewan. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of that place, but it looked amazing because there was hardly anything, except a couple of 'restaurants' which are pretty much made of bamboo and are run by a family who also raise pigs and other animals there, so on your way to the toilet you hear grunting coming from by your feet. We were under orders not to stroke the pigs, because one cheeky one had attacked someone a few days before! On the journey down, we got lost in some farmland, and there was a herd of cows covering the road, that we had to dodge.
This was a proper local, quiet surf spot where the only person in the water is the owner's son. But on this day, madly enough, a group of famous surfers from California, Rome, Cornwall and other places were there with a photographer. The Chinese government had paid for them to fly over, to get some photographs to promote Chinese tourism. It was a real first for China. They were doing interviews with the
guy from the Sanya 'Surfing Hainan' shop, who I was also going to meet there, so I ended up actually eating, surfing and sharing lifts with them. Whilst us four guys were crammed in the back of Holly Beck's private transfer service to the airport, it was interesting hearing all about her pro surfer lifestyle and travels. I was having a great time surfing in those waves, but they got a bit big at times and my rusty (lack of) skills meant I also got dumped onto the rocky sea bed which cut both my knees, twice!
As we had a week's holiday from uni, I carried on with the local surfers down to Sanya, where they're based. As you may have heard on the news, the rain in this part of the country has not exactly been hiding away. Our teacher said it's something like the most rainfall they've had in 50 years, and a few people have died in the floods somehow. The open gashes on my knees disliked having to wade through dirty water and floating rubbish to get anywhere, but other than that, floods are brilliant. I realised the best place to be in that
Holly Beck
Californian pro making the best of the Riyuewan waves. Photo stolen from www.surfinghainan.com. copyright JS Callahankind of weather is in the sea, surfing. Rain goes unnoticed and the waves are big because of the 'typhoon swell'.
I intended to go home every day that week and never did, partly because the road back to Haikou was blocked because a bridge had collapsed in the floods. When I finally did get back to Haikou bus station (half an hour from home), it was the middle of the night and raining ridiculously heavily. There was carnage because no taxis were running and everyone was desperately trying to get home before the flood got too high. When I finally got a taxi, we drove into an area where all traffic had stood still and if we were to open the door the water would have come in. People had abandoned their cars facing the wrong way down the road and everything. A Dutch backpacker who I was sharing the taxi with and I were starting to imagine it might be a case of sleeping in a shop for the night, because there didn't seem to be any way of getting anywhere. Finally the traffic got moving and the taxi took me all the way to the middle
Holly beck
stolen from surfinghainan.com. copyright JS Callahan of campus before breaking down from being too deep in the water. I felt bad leaving the driver there with no way of getting home, so had to get out in bare feet and help push the taxi around for an hour in the rain trying to get it to higher land.
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Lily
non-member comment
haha
哈哈 很有趣 you are genius！