To Portugal for yoga and surfing
IN RUBRIC ABOUT TRAVEL we talk about the journeys of our heroines. In this issue, Tanya Rodina, director of social media, shares her experience of traveling to Portugal for the most unexpected vacation - a combination of yoga and surfing.
How did I come up with it?
About a year ago, I translated a large article for Yoga Journal about yoga and surfing. At that time I practiced yoga for about 7 years, but I never tried surfing. Writing about how yoga will wonderfully complement any surfing session, without experience, it was still strange, but I clearly understood that there is a connection between these two exercises. A month before the trip, at the very initial stage of planning a vacation, I met in a bar with a man who enthusiastically talks about his cool trip to Portugal. He didn’t talk about azulejos or traditional Portuguese pastries, but about how he recently visited a weekly retreat with daily yoga and surfing practices. According to him, the ocean there was perfect for the board, and the photos of the villa on which he lived convinced me that I would go to Karma Surf Retreat.
Preparing for the trip
As it turned out, about 20 million people in the world surf and about the same number of those who can not imagine their lives without yoga. However, the connection between these two such different types of physical activity has begun to strengthen recently. American Shiva Rea was one of those who contributed to this. As a child, she started surfing in Malibu, and when she grew up, she learned to train in yoga, she began to hold regular seminars and even released several books that explain in detail why yoga and surfing are destined to be together: "Surfing and yoga only complement each other friend, because both practices are aimed at toning the body through regular honing techniques. " Dozens of surfer camps can easily be found around the world now, where in primitive living conditions surfers from all over the world live, ride and never blow. This is probably the most affordable way to learn how to surf. But I wanted to have both surfing and yoga. And so comfortable. And beautiful. And the breakfast is delicious. And nature, from which the breathtaking. And strong instructors. And the people around are nice. Before booking a trip, I contacted the creators of Karma Surf Retreat, who convinced me that everything would be exactly as I wanted: 1 week - 1 villa, 2 times a day - Iyengar Yoga, 3 hours of surfing, 4 kinds of incredible super healthy smoothies for breakfast and 5 euros for a bottle of the most expensive wine in the store opposite.
Retreat. Weekends
We arrived at the weekend in Lisbon and 30 minutes later we were at the villa, renting a car. You can order and transfer. The first two days are relaxing, no yoga and surfing - just a huge white elevated villa overlooking the ocean, a welcome barbecue and meeting with a group - it turned out that there would be about 10 people. It is convenient to get into Lisbon, Sintra or Cascais in the first two days. In Portugal, everything is next to each other, but it is unusual to start a holiday vacation with direct rest, so I waited a lot for Monday - then the fun begins.
Weekdays: yoga and surfing
The first hour of yoga class began on Monday at 8 am. Although I was not surprised that the lesson would be so short. A fit woman of 50 years old, a Dane, comes to us and says in beautiful English that now we are going to do Iyengar yoga. For those who do not know: Iyengar yoga is a type of hatha yoga when all poses are done super-slow and thoughtful, a lot of additional gadgets (blocks, belts, covers) are used in the process, and in general it is often prescribed for depression . Personally, I was expecting something more dynamic, because after a couple of hours we will be on the board for the first time, shouldn't we at least wake up by this point? After yoga and a quick breakfast with homemade hummus and smoothies, we are loaded onto a typical surfer bus with boards on the roof and drive to the beach.
We will see several beaches this week, they are all different, but equally close - 30 minutes drive from the villa. All of our surfering instructors say without a doubt that Portugal is the best place to surf in Europe. And if not Europe, then surfing is advised to go to Bali and Hawaii. It is interesting that in Portugal it is not boring to ride both beginners and experienced surfers: quite "green" carefully stand on the boards almost at the edge of the beach, more advanced boldly swim closer to the powerful waves. In both cases, the bonus is a strong wind, insane undercurrent and cold water - the beginning of May, and the ocean did not even think about starting to warm up. Everyone rolls in the group: the earliest age is 8 years old, the oldest guy from Switzerland 38.
Strong legs help us to fight with wind and current. We regularly work on them all over the week in a variety of asanas; a strong wet diving suit saves us from cold water. The first surf in my life begins with jogging, stretching and general instruction. A tall and incredibly tanned native of Bulgaria, who has been living in Portugal for 15 years, tells and shows what to do with the board, how to properly tie it to the foot, how to jump onto this very board, and several times strongly reminds that after falling into the water you should always be grouped and keep your head. One person from the group nevertheless listened to this valuable instruction: I received it on the head with a blackboard, and then proudly walked with patches on my temple. My “injuries” for the week are bruises on my legs and the famous surfer tan: burnt legs up to the ankle, hands to the wrists and a bronze-colored face. To be honest, I, too, a couple of times in the water I got on the head with a board (first my own, and then someone else's), but everything worked out.
In general, even this will not happen to you if you pay attention to technology and don’t crawl right into the thick of things - deeper into the ocean. The first 20 minutes, we just get used to the water. We feel the boards, we ridiculously climb them, align the position of the body, and the instructors launch us with a powerful push in the direction of the coast: we look like airplanes, which at first smoothly float, and then hit somewhere. After half an hour, an important movement is already boldly practiced: while sliding, we raise the torso lying on the board. One to one Bhujangasana - in surfing and really easy to find elements of yoga, for example, without this "cobra pose" on the board to get up just will not work. For another two hours we fight the ocean. My breathing constantly disappears somewhere and hurts my hands in an unusual way. In a few hours you have time to wind yourself up in the same way that some people will not even be able to train in the gym for a week. Another difference is that it is against this incredible fatigue that a powerful wave of inspiration, happiness and joy awakens in the body. Especially after the first time in your life you successfully get up on the board and easily roll on the waves.
After returning to the villa, we were waiting for evening yoga, which everyone goes to. Now we hone the same “cobra pose”, but on the mat. An ideal technique will be useful to us tomorrow and until the end of the week - the whole week we live according to a dream schedule: 8 am - yoga, 10-12 - surfing, 16-17 - again yoga. Every day a breakthrough happens to someone from the group: someone "saddled" a complex wave, learned to catch "white" waves on his own, and on the last day of vacation I suddenly successfully do a headstand (and this after so many years of unsuccessful attempts).
Already on the way back, on the plane, I realized another reason why yoga and surfing fit so well together. Surfing teaches forget about fear. When you look at how they ride, from the outside, it becomes uneasy: here the person somehow turns out to be on a huge wave, so he jumps on the board and practically hovers at high speed, then falls and ends up with his head under water. When you yourself are in the ocean - all this is felt quite differently: instead of fear, there is healthy excitement, thoughtfulness and icy calm. Having accepted and realized this new feeling, it is easy to develop it in yoga too. I successfully make a headstand prevented this very fear, get rid of which I could not for years. It turns out that even 5 days of surfing can change everything.
Portugal: Cascais and Sintra
I had absolutely no expectations about Portugal as a whole, and especially some individual cities. Therefore, it was especially amusing to find out that anything can happen there: the radio in the car doesn’t catch badly because of the hills and mountains sticking up, the cache ran out and did not pay for renting a bicycle, the face and hands burned after a day walk (everything else did not burn, because on the street there is a decent wind at +20, so most normal people are wearing sweatshirts and jeans), but the problem is to find a great place to eat, drink or drink and eat will not arise.
It seems that the city of Cascais consists of half of the ocean and the beach and half of the small classy cafes. Sintra, in turn, consists of half of the old estates and chic palaces, and in the second half of the same cafe. At the entrance to Cascais, we ate a wonderful lobster, which, when it was proudly carried out on a platter while still alive, almost fell into confusion right at me. The next day, we had dinner with surfers from Karma Surf Retreat in an incredible cliff restaurant, 10 minutes from Sintra, where the friendly waiters first persuaded me to try the freshest fish, and then "the most delicious chocolate dessert in the world." Suspicious eateries also turn out to be restaurants with delicious food and local people who are keenly watching football and drinking beer. I will remember for a long time how the three of us had a great dinner in one of the small and very cozy places with wine and traditional snacks for 20 euros. In supermarkets it is still more interesting: a bottle of excellent wine - 3 euro, cheese - 2, vegetables - about 1 euro.
Dogs, taxi drivers and local beaches
In 2013, I lived in Sochi for half a year, just before the start of the Olympics. In early February of this year, I left, and already from the side I observed all these gossip about bad hotels, terrible roads and stray dogs. After almost three months, I ended up in Portugal - and here everything is the opposite: hotels are normal, the roads are much better than in Russia, but things are not so simple with dogs. In all areas where I managed to go for a week, you can meet dogs in some suspiciously large quantities. They proudly sit on a leash and no less proudly bark, if you pass by the territory for which they are responsible. When a couple of days later one of the local surfers said that the locals use dogs here as alarms, I was not very surprised. It costs nothing to them to get two, and even three huge dogs and to set them before the house - for fidelity.
Absolutely all the taxi drivers that we came across during this time are amazingly cute and smiling. Probably, it would be wrong to speak only about taxi drivers as an example of local residents. All Portuguese are surprisingly friendly and open-minded: a janitor on the beach will easily explain in normal English the nearest place where surfers hang out, a young girl pharmacist at the pharmacy in the same English will advise you to eat from a spontaneous cold, and in parallel send it to ginger and lemons. A local yoga instructor unusually easily perceives raging children who are tired of lying in Shavasana. After several days, it seems that people are pleasant, hardworking and responsive.
Surprisingly, there are not many Russians here. The beaches are mostly tanned locals, who either run, or walk somewhere fast, or chat for a business lunch on the ocean. 10 people came to our yoga-surfing retreat and everything is from Switzerland (end of April is the time of holidays, almost like our May days). A young girl who had never tried yoga, young parents with two curly children, two friends who liked surfing so much that they immediately began planning their next trip to Portugal, and we. In addition to surfing and yoga, on the coast you can have fun at will: kitesurfing, ride horses, join a cooking class or go for a long walk in the woods. You can arrange and raid on bars or museums, and you can just spend all the time on the beach. After talking with many expatriates here, I managed to understand that for the first time many people come here for different reasons, but they remain one by one. People who come from Berlin, Madrid and Moscow change their lives and move to Portugal, have families and give birth to children, because, according to them, there is no better place to live - among the rich wildlife that is everywhere among these benevolent people ( the Portuguese themselves, or expats who have already lived here for a while), among the salads made from octopus and the traditional sour cream biscuits "Bolo de Memendoa", the sun, the ocean and soft sand, begins to seem to be here for the spiritual journey, about which told Wes Anderson in "The D arjeeling limited. "