SURFING: Shifty and bumpy, but still beautiful in the Garden Route, South Africa!

Hello everyone, and especially the SurfHive Community! It's Jasper, the musical-surfer dad from Cape Town in South Africa.

Currently, I am not in Cape Town - I am on holiday with my beautiful wife Julia and my precious little daughter Madison (who will be turning two at the end of July.) We are up the "Garden Route" about 5-7 hours drive from Cape Town.

My first few days here have not been about surfing. The same shortage of swell that is causing a sluggish start to the World Championship Tour event at Jeffrey's Bay is not really the problem, as the beach breaks here are very exposed to swell... but the swell has been of poor quality, and the banks seem to be all over the place.

(For those of you who have followed me for a while, this is also the Garden Route village where I have ventured off the beach and along the rocky coastline to find other, seldom surfed waves of my own, including the wave I discovered on New Year's Day the last time we visited this part of the country.)

So, I have taken it easy, and even joined some of the more important work meetings, and then on the weekend I spent some quality time with Julia and Madison, including visiting a snake sanctuary, that you can read about here:

https://ecency.com/hive-168869/@jasperdick/weekend-experiences-garden-route-fun

Today though, I had had enough waiting. The swell is supposed to increase tomorrow and make the main beach-break terrifying (I may be able to find other spots working but there is no guarantee), so I decided to tackle the shifty and bumpy beach-break and just catch a couple as best I can!

First wave after a struggle to get out through the shorebreak...

Looks beautiful in the afternoon sun...

But was actually quite bouncy... I did well to keep going...

With that said, at least the sun was shining and the place is absolutely beautiful!

Here's an interesting photo to demonstrate how a GoPro has a wide angle lens to capture more in the image, but at the cost of distorting the image on the sides (and making things on the side look a bit further away than they are... to the left we seem to be looking left, but to the right we seem to be looking right... Usually the wave would seem biggest on one side with it shrinking with perspective in one direction, but with a GoPro it can be biggest in the middle and shrink with perspective in both directions! Almost like the "pano" option on a cell-phone!

Ducking under the wave we just saw... I like how clean the water is here in this secluded village and how the bubbles are coming off the nose of the board!

With the beach's notorious currents and the shifting waves, I found myself in the wrong place quite often!

So I was very glad I chose a board with a small enough length and volume to make duck-diving more easy. Oooh, look at this bubble pattern coming off the nose!

Last wave... can anyone tell where I am? There is a lagoon mouth between me and the cliffs, and there is a cave in that rocky cliff that actually goes right through to the other side!

Turning towards shore and calling it a day...

So probably not the best surf I've ever had, but still a lot better than nothing! Hopefully it got me in the mood to make a plan and find something surfable in the stormy swell that will show up for the last couple of days of our trip! Then we go to another coastal village!

I am still trying to honour my commitment to surf a new wave every month in 2023! I have succeeded in January (at a reef around the corner from this particular Garden Route village), February, March, April, May and June... but I still need to find one for July! Hopefully before this holiday is over! Wish me luck!

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