As much as I loved the rainy waterfall excursion, we decided that we should probably use the weather to our advantage. After a quick chat with what seemed to be our hotel’s only employee, we found out that the Beach Shack Chalet, located on the neighbouring beach of Juara Bay, offered surf rentals.
Cool board, unfortunately I couldn’t rent this one!
The conditions were supposed to be ideal because the monsoon we seemed to be experiencing had made the waves big enough to surf – a rare occurrence in Malaysia. Raring to get back on a board after my travels in San Juan del Sur, and for my buddies to get to experience some of the action, we took off for the beach.
In less than half an hour, we came upon an eclectic beach hut and an endless supply of slightly choppy 2m swells. I then found myself using my (very) limited surf knowledge to teach my buddies how to ride the waves, only to have the Chalet/Shack’s owner, Tim, come up and pass on some pointers to myself.
Despite being at their mercy for most of the afternoon, I was still able to catch quite a few waves (between floundering around and generally acting like an idiot) before eventually hauling myself back to shore. Now when I say, “hauling”, I literally mean I had to drag myself out of the water, the current pulling me back so hard. Despite the extra missioning this required, I decided to take it as a sign that the tides didn’t want me to leave (lucky for them, I’m already planning my return).
By this point, the sky had reached a calm point, and I had finally learned my lesson that this meant that I needed to take advantage – FAST! I quickly set off to build a sand sculpture (my beach tradition). My original plan was to make a surf bunny (the less common cousin of the snow bunny), but the pieces of coral I used for ears ended up looking more like antlers and the body looked like a shapeless blob (going to blame the grainy sand – not my blatant lack of sculpting ability – for this one). Seeing the finished product, my friend dubbed my creation a Mukdeer – a combination between a reindeer and the Pokémon muk. I actually kind of liked this naming because I got to feel like a badass Pokémon breeder, combining Stantler with Muk (which would be a big deal in the world of Pokémon breeding, because its usually impossible to breed Pokémon from different egg groups – just saying).
Even after taking the time to revolutionize a Pokémon profession, the sky had still held off on its next downpour, so I took advantage with a photo session:
Twice as much in half the space 