Roxy Pro Tour

http://www.aspworldtour.com/roxypro/

Check it out...this is what we did today! The ASP World Tour Roxy Pro competition was on at Rainbow Beach/Snapper's Rock in Coolangatta and we got to see the women compete.

We left the hostel at 8am and got to the competition around 8:30. We were there the whole day and didn't leave until 3:30pm. It was a great day with pretty good swells and amazing weather - they had been calling for rain, but there were just a few clouds here and there. It did get pretty hot though and yes, I got sunburnt. How could I not...7 hours in the sun. I have never seen a whole day surf competition, so it was great to watch it all. I may have to start watching more of those back home...

When we got there, the first thing I did was check out who the competitors were. I didn't really recognize any of them and there is only 1 girl from Cali and 2 others from Hawaii - all the rest are Australian or South American. Then all of a sudden the announcers started talking about Julia de la Rosa Toro - formally known as Julia Christian - as in the Julia Christian - graduate of Carlsbad High! I couldn't believe it. Here I was watching a surf competition in Australia and one of the competitors is from my home town. She has actually been off tour lately, but just happened to join this tour last minute. The other thing too is that she now lives in Peru with her husband (Magoo de la Rosa Toro) so she was listed as surfing for Peru (sellout!)...It was great to sit there and cheer her on. She made it to the quarterfinals, but unfortunately had some bad luck with waves at the end of the heat and didn't make it on to the next round. I tried to talk to her at one point, but she couldn't hear me or was ignoring me - who knows! It was still pretty cool to see her competing.

Afterwards, Mark and I were walking back to the car and just saying to each other "How amazing is it to watch a pro surf competition in Australia and not even have planned it but just happened to be in the area?!?" It worked out great for us. The men are scheduled to compete tomorrow, so we are going to head back up to Coolangatta to watch them (Kelly Slater is on the program - should be great!). We had already planned to stay in Bryon Bay tonight and tomorrow, so we kept those plans and since it is only 70km south of Coolangatta, we will just head back up there in the morning tomorrow.

Hopefully my sunburn will be okay for tomorrow - otherwise I may have to find an umbrella to rent for the day.

Oh yeah, we did eat at the Mexican restaurant last night. We both had enchiladas and it was pretty good...especially for Australia...it was funny though because I don't think I have ever been served Mexican from a white Australian - almost didn't feel right. But we decided we had to compare it to the real stuff, so we broke our promise of not eating any Mexican on the trip and indulged...