Day 3- It's Always Sunny...

    We woke up around 7, I looked out the front of the tent and noticed the sun coming up slowly over the Nile.The sky was glowing a brighter pink and red than I have ever witnessed. I thanked God for allowing me to live this beautiful life and travel to these amazing places.

    Breakfast was amazing, as it always is in a foreign country. Fresh eggs, from free range chickens on the island, fruit that dropped from a tree the day before, sausage that had the taste of fresh in it, and bread that had clearly been baked 30 minutes before in a charcoal stove. I acquired the footage from the Japanese team from my first day of surfing Nile Special and thought about what I could work on today. The water is still low this morning, there is a stick in the pool that is color coded for water levels, the level is still low for Special to be in at a “good” level. 

    Haley, is leaving tomorrow, I’m heart broken that she is leaving so fast. She is my 5x5 twin and my best friend, we push each other and we can tell each other anything without any judgement. After lunch, Haley and I laid in the tent and just talked about life. We talked about our coming year and the adventures we want to go on.

     We tried to avoid the crowds by waiting a little bit but that didn’t work very well. Surfing was going ok, the wave is different every day. I am getting good left pan ams but not sticking them, trying left air screws and still landing on my head, I tried a clean blunt and crashed in an awesome way. I am feeling pretty sore, my forearms are burning all the time!

     We were happily surfing and looked downstream, the clouds were looking pretty dark, the rain was moving in. With a bolt of lighting and a crack of thunder the skies opened up, the wind came at the same time and I felt like I was getting blown upstream in an eddy. Haley and I decided to vacate the area which was probably not the best idea. We started paddling downstream in the chaos of the first rain in weeks. It was the hardest downstream paddle on flat water that I have ever done. I was thankful for my helmet, we are sure it hailed on us for a little bit. Lightning was striking all around us and we were in the middle of the river! We made it back to the island after some screeching and survival paddling. 

      The tent had a tree fall on it during the storm and it was caved in on one side. The tarps had removed themselves from the ground and they were flapping in the wind like an eagle with a leash on. All Haley and I could do was laugh. Laugh at the adventures we were having just after being together for two days. We kept our kayaking gear on and situated all of our stuff. Haley had put out clean clothes to dry and most of her other gear to pack to leave tomorrow…. that proved to be futile. 

     At the end of the day, the skies cleared and all was calm on the island again, until the Russians gave everyone on the island an open bar for the night.