Marie@Trestles

Pick your peak !

Middles

Lowers

The new Timmy Patterson seems all good no ?

Carvin' Marie

Hi there people ,

Time to discover the south of SoCal right ? After a quick stop in Huntington Beach to catch up with friends we made our way to San Clemente with 2 missions: find a new board for Marie and surf the famous reefs of Trestles.
As you can see, both missions accomplished ! Marie found a nice little Timmy Patterson 5'11 and we caught a little swell that lit up the Trestles reefs. Check out Marie trying her new board !

PS: You all wonder how on earth she got me to take pictures isn't it? ...well you remember this sleepy early morning check gone wrong in Panama ..Well after surfing in pain for about a month turns out I ll have to be landlocked for few weeks to make my knee right for the rest of the trip....
To "survive" this, we ll go up north to spend some time in San Fransisco and then get lost in the wilderness in the Yosemite Park !! Not too bad for a plan B !

Californian coast in campervan

Hi guys,

So we have been cruising along the Californian coast with our awesome Catie van for around two weeks now. I think it is time to let you know of our awesome experience. First of all, the van enables us to move around with the swell, stay and camp in amazing places, and the weather here is awesome, so no trouble being in the campervan for so long (yet?!).

Our van is a Dodge Grand Caravan; we rented it from a small company based in San Francisco called Lost Campers (http://www.lostcampersusa.com/). If you are keen on doing the same, their fleet his awesome, they have three different types of vans depending on your needs! It is very cheap and the people there very nice! Enough talking, here are some photos!

We are currently in San Diego. We are planning on moving to the central coast next week. Keep you posted.

Marie

Early morning - Ventura County

LA street art!

Chillin'

After-surf reading time!

Life is good!

Flashback on our first few weeks in California!

Hi everyone,

After 2 months in South/Central America, arriving to Los Angeles was a bit of a shock and we actually felt more out of place than in Perù and Panama for the first few days. Soon enough though, after a few Starbucks coffees and traffic jams, it was back to business as usual, funny how fast it goes. My parents and youngest brother came from France to spend Christmas with us and wanted to make the most of it so the first 2 weeks have been pretty busy. We spent few days in LA to check the famous Venice Beach Boardwalk, Hollywood and Beverly Hills, Malibu, Ventura, and Santa Barbara. Then we headed south to San Diego via the desert (Joshua Tree and Anza Borrego National Park). I think we kind of all fell under the charm of San Diego…amazing coastline and super cool city…we stayed at La Jolla (mean the jewel) and it does deserve its name! Oh yeah there is also a massive oceanographic center and university overlooking one of the best spot of the region (Blacks Beach)…It made us seriously consider doing some more studies !

Hope you enjoy the pictures. We are now in Ventura, with our awesome van Catie. Videos, photos and updates coming soon!

Cheers,

Simon

Famous Joshua Tree

Monkeys at Joshua Tree Park

Venice Beach boardwalk

Venice by night

Oceanside, San Diego County

New Year in Las Vegas!

Hi everyone,

After cruising the Californian coast, we decided to have a change of scenery and get our freak on by going to Las Vegas for the New Year. For us, Las Vegas was one of those places you have to visit, because you have heard so much about. To be honest, we had mixed feelings about what to expect… The drive from Los Angeles takes around four to five hours and crosses the Mojave Desert. On the way, random ‘cities’ have grown to accommodate the gambling freaks and give you a little hint of what Las Vegas can be. We arrived at night and the city is pretty much standing alone in the middle of the desert, with its high casino towers. After a cosy night in our lovely van (her name is Catie by the way) we were ready for Vegas. Everything is done so that it is very easy for people to spend in the Casinos. The food and even sometimes the price of the hotel rooms are discounted to make sure you have enough money to spend on all those machines and tables ! Resort car parks are free to anybody, so we ended up parking (and kind of camping !) at the Treasure Island Resort, fancy isn’t it !! The Strip, as it is known, is a 5 km long portion of the Las Vegas boulevard, where all the big attractions, casinos and resorts are. The flow of people there is unbelievable. It took us 50 minutes to walk back to the car-park one time, because you are just stuck in the middle of the crowd. And surprisingly this crowd is a real mix of people, from the foreign tourists amazed by the whole concept, the Vegas gambling freaks, the good old bogans, to the homeless, street performers…and more ! In two days, we hardly had enough time to visit all the resorts, each having their own little ‘inside world’; the Paris casino/resort for example, as its own ‘Boulevard’, a representation of a French town. Anyway, I can go on and on about Vegas, but you got the picture: you might not be into the whole gambling/partying hard, but it is still worth seeing!

Happy New Year to all of you people!

Marie & Simon.

Welcome to Sin City.

New York City at Las Vegas!

The Strip.

Come and lose all your money people...

Paris at Las Vegas.

Santa Catalina - Panama

Hola muchachos, time to catch up !!

After surfing some empty beachbreak waves at Wizard Beach on Bastimentos for our last days in Bocas del Toro, we left Bocas Town under a burning sun. 4 buses and a couple of taxis later, we arrived to Santa Catalina on the Pacific Coast. As a side note, this trip was also the occasion to test how many persons you can fit in 25-seat bus….the answer is about 50 but it is not super comfortable!!

Most surfers will know Santa Catalina at least by name, and we had mixed expectations from what we had read and heard (crowd etc..) but it is still mostly the  jungle out there and it was pretty quiet. We stayed at a nice little place, right on the beach, overlooking “La Punta” which is the main spot of the area (thanks Shay for the recommendation!). The swell we tracked down on the forecast maps showed up progressively as expected…good introduction to the place with 2-3 ft the first day, 3-4 ft the next and 4-6 ft the third. The spot is a righthand reef break with nice wally sections and a great rhythm…plus the water is amazingly warm (almost doesn’t feel normal when you jump out). The wave is surfed mid to high tide only so the main task of our few days there was watching the tide fill in and pick the best time to go out. 

The swell was supposed to peak the fourth day so I made sure to wake up early to check it out and maybe catch the end of the mid tide early morning….well here is a lesson: make sure you are actually awake when you get out of bed..while still half asleep I managed to miss a step and smash my knee on the corner of the terrace…Small consolation, it turned out the swell had peaked the day before and it was onshore and a bit too low already. One more high-tide evening session and we were off to Panama City again to take our plane.

Next stop California ! Can’t wait !!

simon

Bocas del Toro - Panama

Hi everyone,

From Panama city, we caught a bus to Bocas del Toro (10 hours), where we spent a week. The white sand beaches, the Caribbean culture, vibe and food, and the amazing tropical plants and fruits here and there are all reminders that you are in the Caribbean! We caught a small swell when we arrived, and had the chance to surf in boardies, surrounded by amazing sceneries. We did a fair amount of biking in Bocas, as everything can pretty much be done by bike (unless you want to visit the other islands of course!). So we would bike 7 kms each way to the surf spots, surf, eat, chill, sleep, and this over again for three days. Then the swell dropped, so we went to Bocas del Drago on the other side of the island. Again more biking, way harder this time, but definitely worth the (hilly) ride. Starfish beach as it is called is one of the most beautiful beach I have seen, coconut trees, crystal clear water, hardly anyone, a little sheltered paradise… breathtaking. Because the swell was small we did not get the chance to surf the best spot of the archipelago on Carenero Island, but we did get some good surf at Bastimentos (another island). Wizard Beach is accessible either by boat by walking a very muddy path (it is the rainy season in the Islands). After two more days of surf at Wizard and some mud walking, we are on the road again, going to Santa Catalina on the Pacific coast. Flying to California in 8 days!

Cheers!

Marie

Casco Viejo - Panama City

Hello everyone,

We arrived in Panama on Monday after two flights of a few hours and a stopover in Bogota. We spent the first night and the following day in Casco Viejo which is the old Panama city. There is a very nice hostal there, called Luna's Castle, an old private home  immensely big and beautifuly decorated! The next morning we walked around the neighborhood which until recently was of little interest to the richer Panamians who left for Nuevo Panama, on the other side of the city. However, in 2003 the UNESCO declared Casco Viejo an important aspect of the Panamian Heritage and since then reconstruction of the abandonned and deteriorated buildings has taken place. Although most buildings are still in very bad shape, you can only imagine how beautiul this part of the city must have been...

We then took a bus to Bocas del Toro on the Northern Caribbean coast of Panama, but more on this in our next update!
Cheers,
Marie.

Contrast between Casco Viejo and Panama City in the background

Small plaza in Casco Viejo

Panama City from Casco Viejo