Hot Tubs Or Death By Coconut?

Here’s a question for you- If you had the proverbial gun to your head (imagine a friendly but menacing 9mm Beretta) and had to choose to only ever go on surf trips to cold water destinations or warm water spots for ever more which way would you go? Which way does sir hang? Wetty or boardshorts? The loving confines of rubber or the freedom and potential ball rash of nylon?

It’s not a dumb a question as it sounds, certainly not in these oh-so environmental anti-long haul travel times...

I personally would go cold every time. This puts me at odds with lots, well, most, no pretty much all people. They call me a ‘penguin’ because I like the cold. What’s not to like? Cold water rocks, frigid surf spots are less crowded, there are still frontiers and cold destinations are far more interesting than your generic tropical island- ‘Ooh, palm trees!’ ‘Wow, sand!’ and, errr that’s about it. First things first I bloody hate coconuts, they taste crap and you can never relax under palm trees, waiting as you are to be that statistically probable person that does actually get killed by a plummeting one. So the whole bounty of nature dropping from the trees is out. The other thing with hot places is you sweat. There’s no more unpleasant sensation than sitting in the tropics and just sweating your ring off with no way of cooling down. In cold places you choose your temperature, if you’re hot take off your coat and vice versa. You have the option, layering clothes gives you several options, in the tropics you are limited to being on the verge of sweating or sweating profusely. The Tropics also invariably means mosquitoes and other unwelcome wildlife. No malaria in cold places, less sharks, far fewer snakes. You can see where I’m going with this. I’m all for relaxing under tropical skies but if the price of that is 24-hour harassment from airborne bastarding insects that can kill you with one bite then I think I’ll pass. I won’t be convinced otherwise. Another tick in the cold column is wetsuits- they have the intrinsic benefit of protecting your ass, from punishing UV rays and from nasties on the bottom. Hit the reef? Not a problem in a wetty, hit the reef in boardies and you’re diced and sliced with the pleasure of liming or peroxiding the wounds to come; double the pain. The sunburn just makes your life even more unbearable. Of course you’ll get a better tan in the Tropics, life in a wetty tends to equal a nasty ‘poohead’ tan where your face and hands are nutty brown but the rest of you is pallid English white. A small price to pay and your risk of skin cancer is lessened immeasurably.

 

On the Tropics plus side- the Indian Ocean and Pacific are more consistent (not that it counts for anything anymore with the weather going to hell in a handbasket, Indo is not the reliable option it was, a lot of ‘once in a lifetime’ boat trips are ending in a big, fat expensive skunking) but the Atlantic is more interesting, is home to a diverse range of people and cultures and is a hell of a lot closer to home. There is so much out there that’s cold, wave rich, people poor and bursting with potential. Look at a globe, look at the land distribution- most of it is in the cold bits oop north not in the hot bits in the middle. Ireland, Canada, Russia, Greenland, Iceland, the British Isles* and Norway are all holding and the more the Arctic ice sheet melts the more spots will open up.
Do you want to go travel where a million other people have been and surf with a hundred friends in a hasslefest every session or would you rather be different? Do you want some adventure? Do you want to pioneer new spots? How about going places where other surfers are super stoked to see you and surf with you? This is the cold way. If it so happens those cold surf spots happen to be populated with hot, semi-nubile, Scandy chicks with their own hot tubs then that’s just the lemon next to the pie...
I is a penguin, I rock a 6mm wetty and I’d rather be a penguin than whatever the sticky, stinking, sweaty, coconut eating Tropical version is any day... (Possibly a lizard?)

*I actually did a bit of research into the ‘British Isles’ thing –one of the most vehement arguments on web forums- as to whether Ireland is part of the British Isles. Brits say ‘it’s geography, get over it’, the Irish say ‘it’s deeply offensive’. Truth is historically (as in Greeks/Romans) Ireland was Hibernia, Britain was Britannia and collectively they were known as the Oceani Insulae simply meaning ‘Islands of the Ocean’. The term British Isles wasn’t coined until the 17th century…