A surfer's desire

My sister, Dana, surfs... so she likes to inform us each, and every, day. The entire time leading up to our island adventure she would ask me repeatedly if she could surf there, and if in the off chance she couldn't, why (and I quote) "in the world" would I have chosen an island like Madeira to visit.  She tried with all her might to get me to make last minute changes to another island... any other island that had surfable waves.

That wasn't going to happen, no matter how hard she tried.  Besides, I knew I was going to stay on the 'favorite sister status' either way. But, just to make sure I'd have a valid reason to stay on the top of her list, we checked with an information desk as soon as we arrived to see if there were any surf spots on the island.  Turns out, there was ... on the opposite side.

Trying to please my sister, and her cravings to surf, I expressed my enthusiasm for going.  Little did I know at the time, she could have cared less and the main reason she was going is because of my "enthusiasm".  The hour and a half long bus ride to Sao Vicente (our destination) was an hour and a half's worth of torture for Dana, who has extreme cases of motion sickness.  All but 30 minutes of that ride we were going up and down switchbacks; her face was nearly green by the time we arrived. But the prospects of surfing nursed her back to health as soon as we exited the bus.

When we reached the surf area, a very small recess in the shoreline, there were a handful of people in the water.  We looked around for a rental shop, but found none.  Instead we stood on a dock watching as those who surfed missed one wave after another. "GO!", Dana would scream, "AHH!  That wave was awesome and you let it go by!"  Or she would exclaim, "Dude! Cut back, cut back ..." and when the surfer would fall she would turn to me and say, "see, he didn't cut back!"  To be quite honest though, most of her lingo went over my head.

So she moaned and she groaned, incensed that she couldn't go out on the water and teach the kooks (pronounced kukes) -apparently a term for beginner surfers - a thing or two. And I, indifferent to it all, just ate my lunch...passionately, because it was THAT good.