Montañita – Day 3: Breaking the Surf
MONTAÑITA
Day 3: Breaking the Surf
October 20, 2025
My class with Carlos wasn’t until late in the afternoon, meaning I had the entire morning to myself. That said, I still had enough going on to keep me busy.
After the morning yoga session with Pedro, which followed practically the same flow as the previous day, I had breakfast with Patricia before she went back to Cuenca. I then prepared for a functional training class offered as part of the package at Balsa Surf Camp.
Here, I was met by Jennifer, a German woman who had been living in Ecuador for the past 12 years and now trained all kinds of athletes for competitions. And now, she was stuck with the dud. She showed me a few exercises designed to help with surfing. As ready as I was to disappoint her, she was actually impressed by my mobility, with my yoga practice having taken my flexibility to the next level. My main weaknesses, I noticed, were reactivity and paddling endurance. She told me I’d have to work on my core and mid-back, both of which I had been neglecting over the previous few months.
After the session, I soaked in the hot tub to soothe what was left of my sore muscles. Then, I had a quick lunch featuring the best friggin’ tacos I’d ever tasted in my entire life, followed by a nap. Man, I love siestas – especially on a hammock!
The Camera Never Lies
My third surf class with Carlos began with him showing me photos and videos taken during my previous lessons, something I’d had no idea he’d been doing.
By analysing them together, I could identify some of my main positioning problems on the surfboard. I was placing most of my weight on my back leg, extending my rear arm behind me instead of keeping it flexed forward, rarely positioning myself in the centre of the board and splaying my legs far too wide apart. Seeing all those imperfections somehow encouraged me to do better because I now knew exactly what I could fix.
Once at the beach, I did a couple of dry runs before we headed towards the waves. I told Carlos I didn’t wanna paddle all the way out because I wanted to save my energy for the actual surfing. I knew I wasn’t gonna build up my stamina over such a short period, so I’d swim out towards the waves instead and then get ready. Once I was on the board and prepared to surf, I’d take a deep breath and try to remember everything he’d explained to me over the previous few days.
As each wave approached, I’d start paddling towards the shore. Once I’d feel the board accelerating beneath me as the wave picked it up – a sensation that had taken me a long while to recognise – I’d pop up and try to settle into the correct position. It took a while, and I certainly didn’t achieve a perfect posture, but I can say that my stance gradually improved towards the end of the lesson. In fact, when I’d see Carlos gleaming every time I’d manage to catch a wave, I’d feel all warm and gooey on the inside!
I might not have caught every wave, that’s for sure, but I was immensely proud of myself for working on some of my biggest weaknesses and beginning to improve them. My goal had never been to master the sport. It was simply to get better, and I was already happy with my progress.
Checkmate at the Tipping Point
After class, I headed back to Balsa, where I found Pedro writing poetry on the couch. He asked whether I wanted to join him for a game of chess. Having not played chess in years, I promised him it would be a quick match, with strategy games never having been my forte. To my credit, my prediction proved accurate. The game lasted only a few measly minutes before I had to tip over my king.
The conversation that followed, however, lasted several hours. We talked about our respective paths through life and how happy and fulfilled we both were with the lives we had created. By deviating from the traditional path and what society expected of us, we felt as if we were much better off. We then talked about how central nature had become to both our lives, which inevitably led us into a whole other conversation about sustainability – much like the one I’d had with Laurie in Cotopaxi National Park.
Since my conversation with Laurie, I had come across news coverage of a major scientific report warning that the world might already have crossed its first catastrophic climate tipping point. Warm-water coral reefs were undergoing unprecedented dieback, while the Amazon rainforest faced a growing risk of widespread dieback as climate change and deforestation pushed it closer to its own tipping point. Years back, I remember reading this book published in 2006 called The Chaos Point by Ervin Laszlo warning us about these inevitable consequences if we didn’t change our ways. Lo and behold, we were now facing them.
Needless to say, I didn’t quite need this report to make me realise how dire the situation was. By this point in time, I’d seen plastic-riddled beaches on tropical islands, moraines on mountains that were previously covered by glaciers, bleached coral reefs in the most remote corners of the ocean, and scorched graveyards where forests used to thrive. Not to mention, summer after summer, our weather warnings only seemed to et more frequent and more alarming. At this point, I was kinda rooting for our own extinction so that the planet could finally catch a break!
With both of us having built so much of our lives around nature, seeing it being ruined by ourselves was a sobering thought to say the least. We’re the friggin’ worst, aren’t we?