Surfing with the Hawaii Surf Guru

I’d never tried surfing before, so I figured…what better place to learn than in Hawai’i?

I do most of my “travel research” on Yelp because I tend to plan my travels around food, so after a bit of digging around, I found amazing reviews for the Hawaii Surf Guru, otherwise known as Kimo.

Kimo is a magical human being. That’s all I gotta say.

I booked a 90-minute private lesson for $120 that ended up being closer to 2 hours. Truth be told, I was a little apprehensive that I’d be a lost cause with surfing. As I mentioned in a previous post, my back had been hurting quite a bit and just getting myself to stand required way more effort than it should have.

…But I also didn’t want to leave Hawai’i without at least trying it, so I decided to just go with it. Thankfully, my body cooperated (for the most part). I’d actually had an SUP yoga class lined up for a couple hours after this one, but I apparently messed up the scheduling so that one didn’t happen. (It was probably a good idea to give myself a break though.)

A photo posted by Farrah @ fairyburger (@fairyburger) on Jun 7, 2016 at 12:50pm PDT

Kimo is super down to earth and such an amazing teacher! He’s been surfing for 50+ years and is super super chill. He gave me reef shoes, a surf shirt, and a board, and started off the lesson on the shore to discuss safety, explain the basics of surfing, and to have me practice getting up on the board before we paddled out onto the water.

Once we were out there, he would read the waves and tell me when to paddle. I was actually up and standing by the 3rd(!) wave! :D!!!

I really liked Kimo’s surf philosophy–when you’re out there on the water, nothing else matters. Just enjoy yourself and let your inner child out.

He noticed very early on that I have a major tendency to overthink things–something he found common in all his “doctor-type” students (har har), so he said this would be an especially good thing for me, because it’d train me to stop thinking and just go for it.

We got to talking about life while we were out on there and I found out that he does lots of outreach and volunteer work, including helping out with a surf camp for autistic children!

He was super patient and encouraging and really good at noticing little details so he could help me fine-tune what I was doing. I apparently had a natural tendency to surf down the line, so he just went with it, and by the end of the lesson, we’d moved off to much deeper waters/bigger waves!

If not for the fact that I’d booked my lesson on my second-last day in Hawai’i and already had a stand-up paddleboarding lesson (read more about that in a month for Travel Tuesday! :P ) scheduled for the next day, I totally would have scheduled another lesson.

If I ever get to move to Hawai’i, I’d love to take regular lessons with him. I had so much fun! *-* My only regret is that there is no pictorial evidence of me killin’ it on the water. (So sad. :'( ) But what did I say about leaving a bunch of excuses to return to Hawai’i? That’s right. There’s another one.

After my lesson, I headed back to Tropical Tribe for a celebratory breakfast!

A photo posted by Farrah @ fairyburger (@fairyburger) on Jun 7, 2016 at 2:35pm PDT

I went to chill at Ala Moana Beach Park for a bit before heading back to where I was staying and promptly KO’ed for about 3 hours (…surfing is really tiring? So much paddling!).

I had ambitions to go hiking at Manoa Falls in the afternoon but missed basically every bus ever and decided it was a sign from above to not go…so I explored downtown and found a glorious shave ice place instead: Waiola Shave Ice!

A photo posted by Farrah @ fairyburger (@fairyburger) on Jun 7, 2016 at 9:55pm PDT

I may or may not have gotten another one for the road. (It was a somewhat rainy mile each way to get there!)

• Have you ever been surfing?
• Do you have a tendency to overthink things?
• Are you the type to pack in a billion activities or do you prefer to just chill/relax when you’re on vacation?