Surfing With Charlos Is Harder Than It Looks

Today I met a surfer named Charlos Bentley, who took me out to the big waves to teach me some techniques. "You'll be taking some water, but don't worry, it will be ok," he counseled.

After a few hours, I got off the board and nearly fell on the beach with exhaustion...surfing, I didn't realize, is damn hard work. He works for a surf shop called "Toes on the Nose," where they rent boards and sell equipment and clothes. He's one of their instructors.

Bentley spends hours a day on a nine-foot board chasing these waves. He is built the way a surfer and twenty-something buff dude should be, with broad shoulders and the ability to paddle out past the big waves to the waiting zone with ease. I felt myself huffing and puffing trying to keep up with this kid, vowing to myself that I will join that gym and work on my biceps.

Surfing is harder than it looks. The waves crash into you and slam you down and for a fleeting second you think you're gonna drown. But Charlos advised me not to panic, and to put my arms and legs out straight when the waves overtake me, and let myself naturally lift back...once I stopped putting so much energy into being afraid, it became easier.

Like golf, one of surfing's benefits is long periods of time where you can talk, sitting out there waiting for the waves. It's amazingly calm, and then these giant waves just appear, in groups of three, or four or five. That's the scary part, since after you crash, you look back and a giant wave is closing down on your just mopped off face.

Charlos was raised in the Dominican Republic, his parents were traveling missionaries and he still loves that place. Cabarete has good waves, he told me. He was just married eight months ago and his wife is also a great surfer. He wants to go to the fire academy and become a firefighter. It's a requirement here to be bi-lingual so he's got a leg up. Plus he's in such great shape. "If you want to get in shape, just buy a board and a wetsuit, no need to go to the gym," he said, paddling deftly out to another wave.

I watched him ride the waves and curl down the edge, as I struggled to keep the nine-foot board up high enough to avoid being swamped.He showed me how this beach has a sandbar that keeps the waves from rising as high in the middle, but they begin their arc way out and that's where you want to be. He showed me how to balance myself on that board and to begin paddling like mad even way before you think the wave will hit you. Boy it will.

Charlos pointed to some little black fins bobbing out there in the waves. "Dolphins," he said, "they like to ride the waves, you see them riding and playing out there all the time."