North Shore Shenannigans

The call was out...

"30 foot swell up Banzai Pipeline at the North Shore"

And nothing was going to stop us being there to see it.  You see, Chris, my dear cousin, is a surfer chic from way back.  Although she doesn't get out there as much as she would like anymore, surfing apparently doesn't leave your system.  Growing up in Geraldton gave you this special luxury.  Marie tried surfing once which is where her surfing career started and ended and I rocked a boogie board in my 20's.  But now, as an older and wiser person (yes Bernard, I feel that I'm a little bit wiser) I can appreciate the skill and athletic ability that it takes to be a surfer, especially of waves of this size.  

Also the surfers are mostly pretty hot!

 

mostly...

 So we hired a car, got our GPS set up and made our way to the North Shore.  Chris did a great job of driving on the wrong side of the road, Marie was the eyes and ears of the back seat whilst I navigated, giving directions in the voice of the GPS lady, which I'm sure didn't annoy anybody.

To me, the ocean looked sloppy and rough, but to Chris, the seasoned surf reader, "It's totally going off. It's a massive, pumpin' off shore swell", she said 

We stopped of at a junior competition at Sunset Beach and watched that for a while...

But soon realised that there was probably some older boys surfing down the road a bit at Bunzai Pipeline Beach.

We had beaten the crowds, so we found a park pretty easily.  However, if you're a fireman who likes to surf, you can park where ever you like..... let's just hope there are no fires whilst the swell is up!

There were hundreds of blokes out there all trying desperately to catch that dream wave.

Some even tried riding the wave in tandem, a faux pas, I've just recently learned, which is frowned upon amongst the surfing fraternity.

 I'm guessing, based on guessing that this surfer is about 6ft, that this wave would have to be about 18ft, at a guess?

The conditions must have been a little much for some people.  This person did not look happy at all as he did the walk of shame down the beach with a bit of board under each arm looking forlornly out at the waves that today, had beaten him.

I was watching him (and taking pictures) thinking, you poor bastard.  

It was about the same time that I looked down and realised that I'd been standing on something that you don't expect to stand on at the beach.

 After taking in all the gnarliness of the local "coness" (which is Geraldton speak for contest) we headed back to the car, but not before I creepily snapped this young fellow showering..... you'll be pleased to know that I stopped snapping once he started taking his wetsuit off!

We followed the coast, using a map of what we thought would be touristy landmarks, however Hawaii is seriously lacking in any signage of any kind, therefore we had to guess where we were on the map based on mountains, rock formations at the beach and pure luck.  

This chap in the middle stopped and had a chat with us.  He told us his name and that he was with his brother and his cousin.  I told him that Chris was my cousin and he looked over at her and back to me and said, "Oh, that's good."  

It was such a beautiful day with gorgeous scenery.  We were very lucky to have started our day at the crack of dawn as by the time we'd reached the North Shore every man and his dog were out and about as well making the traffic move along the one and only road excruciatingly slowly.  I think we averaged about 50kms per hour around the whole island.

A bit of fun was had with the cameras...

 One of our stops was to Chinaman's Hat Island, named chiefly I would expect because it looks a little bit like a Chinese hat.  Especially if you stand under it like this.

And a little bit of panoramic pandemonium.