Day 10

Bigfoot quality image of me surfing.

Many things happened today, both good and bad.  We bought our breakfast at the supermarket.  Mom made me finish off an almost entirely full one liter bottle of liquefied yogurt because the refrigerator here is broken.  Today was the day we decide to teach ourselves to surf. The hotel owner, a German surfer dude, gave us a few pointers before we headed out.
We tossed our backpacks behind a log on the beach and admired the waves.  It was fairly obvious Mom was stricken with terror.  Eventually she mustered up the courage to get in, with some goading from me.  The first ten minutes in the water caused my confidence to plummet. The waves seemed too rough, and it seemed unlikely that I’d ever catch a wave, let alone stand up.  Eventually, certain strategies for passing through the waves with less resistance became obvious.  After that I was ready to start riding them.  My second attempt at standing up was a complete success.  I was taken aback slightly as I had heard that standing up could take hours, or even days for some people.  I can only assume my exceptional strength, agility and balance made me such a quick learner.

Coming back in.

Mom had caught a few waves, but she didn’t have the strength to raise her body off the board. After accidentally hitting Mom in the face with my surfboard (I’ll discuss how I redeemed myself later), we got out.  We tried to return to our stuff, but we failed.  Why, you may ask.  Because our stuff had been stolen of course!  While we had been flopping around in the water, someone had snuck in, grabbed our back packs, and scurried off into the woods. They kindly left us our shoes and towels though. Mom began, understandably, spewing obscenities.  She had lost her camera, bag, and worst of all, her contacts.  My mother is essentially legally blind without them, and all she had back at the hotel room was her glasses (which make her look like an owl from the 80s), and a single contact.  They were heavy  duty, prescription contacts as well, so the local pharmacy wouldn‘t carry them.
We set off in hopes of finding our bags rummaged through but with worthless items, such as her contacts, intact.  Unfortunately our search didn’t seem to be going anywhere.  Everyone we spoke with said the same thing, “No we didn’t see anyone with two backpacks.  The bags are probably lost forever, but there is a pharmacy down the street if you want to buy new contacts.”  We refused to take this advice.  We searched and searched, and finally found ourselves in the woods again, assuming the culprit might not want to walk around the streets with two touristy looking backpacks.
As I was walking through a trail, I spotted a backpack underneath a tarp.  Was it ours!!?!?

I'd steal them too.

No.  However, I began to think perhaps this was an area where the culprit stashed his stolen bags.  There was a riverbed a couple dozen feet away.  I walked over and scrutinized the area closely.  I spotted our hotel key and compass lying at the base of the tree.  I left them there (so I couldn’t forget the exact location), and got Mom.  After inspecting the tree base closely I noticed an unusual bulge of leaves.  I began sweeping them away and uncovered Mom’s pack, with everything except the camera still present!  I crossed the river and looked some more, and quickly uncovered my own pack.  We had some celebratory drinks at the hotel, and eventually returned to the beach for more surfing.  This time we left the bags back at home.