Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

The journey

Cold, windy, raining and cross shore slop are not words that you could use to describe Ecuador, or its surf in a million years. Our flight hadn't been too bad. The hop from London to Amsterdam was fine.

We then hung around in Amsterdam for a few hours where we met the South African team pushing each other around in the luggage trolleys (but on the whole behaving a lot better than the British!).

The Ecuadorian countryside.

The KLM flight from Amsterdam to Ecuador was ok too; I mean 9 hours of all the latest movies released from back home, with intervening meal times and snacks can't be bad whichever way you look at it.

Arrival, Ecuador

When we arrived at the airport after travelling for approximately 15 hours, the first thing everyone noticed was the heat. You could possibly describe it as unbearable! It was nothing like anyone on our team had experienced before.

The bus journey to our hotel 'Cocas' was interesting, you would drive past slums on the hills in the distance, then 10 minutes later past hotels and supermarkets that you would find back home and not look twice at (Apart from the mud and dirt covering them).

For the first day or two we have been the only team here staying in the Hotel Cocas. Surfing twice a day for a couple of days with the Saffas as nice, knowing that we would only have a short period of this routine left before the other teams arrived and the water got so busy it was stupid, and impossible to get waves.

The surf break where the contest is being held is called 'Salinas'. It's really nice and a super good set up but, has one minor complication of being in a marine base just south of our hotel.

The city of Quito, Ecuador

Walking through is a funny experience, you constantly felt like someone is pointing a gun at you… again, making the whole thing a lot different to anything we experience back home!

Monday 23 March

We have been here for five days now already and today is the parade and opening ceremony for the ISA world Junior Surfing Games 2009. There are approximately 23 teams here ranging from the obvious champions like Hawaii and Australia to underdogs Sweden and Switzerland! Every team has their own team kit, chant and spirit, making this event so much more exciting and unpredictable.

The contest starts officially on Sunday 29 March and goes on for a week. In previous years the best result we have ever had is 9th, which is pretty good for a country with baltic weather and rubbish waves on a regular basis.

But this year we want to push that result to a better one with no excuses. We have a better team spirit than we have ever had so there's no reason we can't do it!

I'll let you know later on how we all do.