I tried looking out of the cramped minibus’s windows, but the condensation and the streams of water from the driving rain made everything a gray-green blur. Even the driver was forced to a slow pace through each bend of the winding, coastal road, with the slope on the left and the steep drop to the sea on the right. The wipers could not beat back the absolute downpour, nor could the frame of the bus stop the wind from sneaking through the cracks and chilling my hands.
It was a long drive, full of twists and turns and somber passengers, eyes cast down away from the iron-gray sky. But then for a few minutes, the rain seemed to let up, and I could see from the window the coastline, and the huge crashes of wave against rock, a bashing that hurled gouts of white seawater high into the air. As the foam drifted back down like snow, the black water slithered back from the jagged rocks, preparing to charge with the next massive wave.
I took a few deep breaths.
Then I was walking down a dark, one-lane road of concrete, where a little shack appeared on the left, a makeshift assembly of tin sheets, wooden posts, chain-link fence, and blue tarps trying and failing to keep out the water. But apart from the freezers full of Cornetto and the like; and shelves stocked with Pringles and Snickers bars, the shack was also home to many racks of brightly colored surfboards. It cost me $7 U.S. to rent a board for the day, and in a few short minutes I found myself in a tiny locker-like space, smaller than any telephone booth I’ve ever seen, with a ragged mirror and a few weak hooks, struggling into my wetsuit.
The *twatch* *twatch* of approaching flip-flops after I’d stored my backpack in a locker introduced the surf-shop manager — if he was a manager at such a young age — to tell me the water was too rough for me to take my key. Apparently another patron had had his sucked off in the ocean and they couldn’t get his locker open. So we hid my key above the little food vendor’s counter.
Barefoot, but with my board under my arm and my wetsuit keeping me surprisingly warm in the cold rain, I strolled down the concrete path, flooding over from both ditches, to Big Wave Bay.
It was aptly named. Both red flags were up, warning that the beach was closed to all users. The waves, as it was reported, were 7 feet tall when I arrived. And I, having never surfed before, had no idea what this meant. All I felt was the giddiness bordering on enough fear to turn back entirely. But how could I turn back now?
Big Wave Bay is a small stretch of sand, taking not more than 3 or 4 minutes to walk from one end of it to the other. On either end are jagged rocks hammered by the swell on the outside and a strong sideways current inside. As it turns out, the place is usually very small. Only on rare occasions, such as during a storm, does the bay actually get big waves, so I count myself lucky.
As I approached the water, awing at the biggest waves I’d seen since Thailand (seven or so years prior), I saw only two Westerners in the water and one local. I waited and watched for a few minutes, getting the nerve to plunge in.
When one of the Westerners came out, I approached and asked, “Okay, I’m brand new to this. Is it too dangerous for me to go out there?”
He said, in the most emphatic way, and with what I reckon was a New Zealand accent, “YES!” then added, “Unless you’re super confident, if you go out there, you’re gonna get nutted.”
I didn’t ask what was meant by ‘nutted.’ But that didn’t sound good. He saw the concern on my face and re-considered, “Tell you what. If you’ll stick to the inside, you’ll probably be okay. So, I d’know. But, yeah, just have fun with it.”
Silly me, I thought that by “the inside” he meant not to the left or the right, which was closer to the rocks. I didn’t realize he meant between the beach and big sets.
In any case, I went for it, striding into the dark, foamy water, breathing deep and hoping I wouldn’t get ‘nutted.’
I arrived back on the sandy shore about twenty minutes later. I sat on my board watching, intermittently, the crashing waves and the three big cuts on my feet, dripping streams of blood into the curs’ed salt that stung all my wounds like hell. These little openings in my flesh were trophies of a struggle that had eventually required grabbing a tattered rope of buoys that failed to fence off the cliffs farther left and hauling myself back by it, not an easy task with a surfboard whose leash might get tangled in said rope at any time. As I sit writing this, two months after the event, I can look down and see the two nice, shiny crimson scars from this little adventure, with resignation that they are not going anywhere.
They are a reminder of the price of failing my usual habit; thoroughly understanding what I’m doing before I do it. Despite my years of breakdancing and gymnastics, solo foreign travel to places like Cambodia, hiking, climbing, scattered martial arts, my few little cave explorations, and even my four whitewater paddleboard experiences, being a personal trainer, etc., I have sustained no major injuries in my life, nor ever been hospitalized for anything but food poisoning. I think I am a remarkably safe adventure enthusiast, but on this occasion — not the first nor the last — I went in over my head and paid the fortunately-small price. It is when we stray from a good path that we appreciate its virtues, and this incident has reaffirmed my commitment to forethought as the ultimate virtue, to knowledge before action.
I’ve met plenty of adventurers who have a long list of major injuries, periods of recovery, and near-death accidents — climbing, kayaking, skiing, whatever. And while some see this as the mark of someone “trying hard enough” or “pushing their limits” I see this as not knowing oneself. Isn’t that one of the treasures of adventuring? Knowing oneself; discovering our strengths and all the challenges we’re capable of surmounting? He who knows what he’s good at and can be honest about what he’s not good at is wiser and more valuable to me that someone whose false confidence that they can do anything gets them into trouble. If you get injured, in the words of Steph Davis, “you blew it.” You didn’t have a good enough knowledge of yourself or the environment you were in. I try to avoid these failures. I can look back on my snowy, near-hypothermic misadventures in the Smokies and other similar misjudgements with satisfaction that the price was small, indicative of a small difference between what I thought and the truth. But I can’t look on them as successes. They are rather the slap of Mother Nature’s ruler on her student’s hand, encouragement to do better next time — to know the truth about the world and myself, even better.
I was pretty pissed at all this. Again I thought of going back, but I had to finish this trip to Hong Kong strong. It is said that genius has an infinite capacity for taking pains. I’m no genius, but the real Sze Yuen Fung, that person inside of me whose thirst for adventure is stronger than all other desires, can be painstaking enough when thrill is to be gained. I had to go Zen.
I went out until I was waist-deep in the water. I stood there, still as a statue, feeling, listening, watching, shivering, my feet still stinging. I waited and learned. I tried to tune into the power of the ocean, to feel what was going on before me. I got comfortable with the waves as they hit me there. Then I went a little farther…
For the following three hours or so I had an absolute blast. I body-surfed waves that blasted me like a missile right up to the sand so that I had to bail in the shallows or risk grinding up the beach like a penguin on ice. I paddled through breaking waves and learned to catch them. I even stood up for a few seconds here and there. The surf came down, the rain slackened, and I found myself in company with four or five Hong Kong surfers who shared my battle against the saltwater with equally mixed results.
I won’t embellish. I didn’t ride any huge waves. I have a long way to go. I didn’t perfect a duck-dive, and I didn’t hop coolly off my board right onto the sand after successful rides like I had with my paddleboard on the tiny waves of Shell Island, Florida. But I came away smiling, laughing, exhausted, whistling. A good snapshot of that day might be me getting caught up by a wave, standing up, holding for a second or two, then falling backwards, totally relaxing back into the water. Under it, I waited patiently and calmly for the turbulence to pass, before popping up and turning my board seaward again. At the end, my neck was raw from the rub of my wetsuit, and I stripped the top part off, realizing just how cold the rain was as I walked back to the surf shop.
I devoured a can of Pringles, some candy bars, and turned in my board with thanks to the proprietor. Still damp under my clothes with gleaming hair and feet positively tormented by my boots, I hobbled back to the dead-end bus-stop and was on my way to Taiwan — where I had decided to make surfing my next conquest.
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